How the other half lives, what and when you learned

[tomorrowalready]

Reflecting from another thread made me realise it was not until my 20s I found out some people expected to have a private bathroom. I went to university then and shared with another mature student who had been married, divorced and said she found having to share a bathroom with unrelated people unpleasant. I had always taken it for granted as had live in jobs and rented bedsits before. She was a lovely person and also the first person I knew who had a glass of wine every evening and she introduced me to many new things - cooking with garlic, sherry, owning and using a car for shopping for example.

So what did you take for granted that surprised other people you met?

And at 18 of course your going to continue to accept money from them despite them not being good lovely parents.

@Marmitemarinaded

And at 18 of course your going to continue to accept money from them despite them not being good lovely parents.

I don't think that's why the previous poster was saying.

She's saying that there are parents who can be bad parents and also leave you without any type of support financial or otherwise. You may see that financially supporting your kids is the bare minimum and one your entitled too, but actually it came be a lot worse.Not everyone is supported by their parents financially at 16 let alone 18.

You are comparing apples to oranges. They are not the same. This was the point of her story, some people think it's their right to be financially or otherwise supported which in some families isn't something they are able to do.

I wanted to go to college to study art, a subject I loved. My father stated in no way would he finance that as it was a waste of his money as I would only get married and have children. If I wanted to go i had to pack my few belongings and get out of his house. At 16 I was too timid to even contemplate this, I dutifully left school and went on a YTS and paid my lodge with half if it. I had friends who did just that, shared a high rise, worked and went to college. BRAVE beyond me, never did get the children and ended up divorced with no career. I had it drummed into me that a woman should stay at home and know her place.

My impression having reread that it was those university students isn’t realise how lovely their parents were * I was sick of the petty complaints about their lovely parents*
But based on fact they financially funded them only

@ScrollingLeaves

Many years ago, at the age of six I lived in a country, as a foreigner, where many of the people were extremely poor ( third world level).

I was in the main square alone with my little basket in which I had a coin. It would have been enough for an ice cream cone. I met a boy I was acquainted with but did not know well but we spoke in a friendly way to each other. He was a bit older perhaps nine. I could see how poor he was to my eyes in that he had ragged clothes. I gave him my coin thinking he might like some ice cream.
But not at all, he took us into the church where he solemnly and reverently put it into the collection box. I was so impressed by his goodness.

Gosh. I’d have been horrified at the power of religion to brainwash people.

What I'm most shocked about on behalf of the art school application ys is that their teachers/schools hadn't taken them to galleries if they were studying Art A'Level or given them some coaching about the interviews and what to expect. I suppose it's the double whammy of coming from a home where parents don't go to art galleries AND going to a bad school. To think that education is a leveller. I wonder how Tracey Emin did it?

@RosesAndHellebores

What I'm most shocked about on behalf of the art school application ys is that their teachers/schools hadn't taken them to galleries if they were studying Art A'Level or given them some coaching about the interviews and what to expect. I suppose it's the double whammy of coming from a home where parents don't go to art galleries AND going to a bad school. To think that education is a leveller. I wonder how Tracey Emin did it?

I did art a-level at a shitty comp. We weren’t taken to any galleries or anything. Luckily I didn’t want to pursue art as a career (I did it as a ‘fun’ 4th a-level) but it didn’t really occur to me that they were hardly setting us up for success!

For Oxbridge my DC attended practice interview panels at other independent schools so the practice was made more real because it was with strangers. They literally took UCAS to an art form. DD had a gap year after A'Levels and reapplied and the school helped again and were pleased to do so.

@RosesAndHellebores

What I'm most shocked about on behalf of the art school application ys is that their teachers/schools hadn't taken them to galleries if they were studying Art A'Level or given them some coaching about the interviews and what to expect. I suppose it's the double whammy of coming from a home where parents don't go to art galleries AND going to a bad school. To think that education is a leveller. I wonder how Tracey Emin did it?

I didn’t study art at A level.

I left school at 16 and then tried to go to college when I was 19 and had worked full time for three years.

I studied Art for GCSE and there were a couple of trips but I was so badly bullied that I skived school on trip days because it was horrendous. I’d be ignored and then ridiculed for walking round on my own, people would sit three to a coach seat to avoid having to sit next to or near me. Everyone would sit in a group eating lunch, crowded round a table again so they wouldn’t have to come near me. I soon learned that school trips were more hassle than they were worth.

So no, I’d never seen any art between that and having to leave home at 16 and work to support myself.

I actually attended one of the best grammar schools in the country, but was just left to rot as I had issues with bullying etc (no one believed me), so no one cared.

Oh and my school were wonderful with the kids they liked.

They just washed their hands of me.

@LastSummerHere

It's mind blowing that people in university were shocked that others live in poverty. Didn't you READ as a child??

Yes. Extensively. But it wasn't real. I'm not surprised at all that this also applies in the opposite direction.

When you live in big council estates, as do all your family in different but similar estates, then that's your world. Council houses were allocated according to size of family so we had a 3 bedroom as there was 7 of us, and all of our street had exactly the same blocks of flats. My cousins had a two bed as there was 4 of them. We weren't richer because our flat was bigger.

I didn't meet anyone from a private school until I went to university. I had no insight at all into what "inherited wealth" really meant. I was very lucky to be at university in the late 70s early 80s and on maximum grant and I managed to get bar/waitressing jobs all the way through so for a student I was fairly affluent. But the thought that I could ask my parents for a few hundred for a holiday was just so outrageous - and they didn't have it. I would be gobsmacked when friends would show up with sparkling new cars.

We weren't Dickensian poor. But we ate cheap food and wore cheap and hand me down clothes. But so did everyone else we knew.

Being "interviewed" by my friends mother when I went to visit. It was like a job interview!

@CallMeRisley

When I was at Uni I brought a boyfriend home to my Northern home town for a visit; he was Southern and very posh. We stayed at my parents’ house- semi detached. In the morning as we walked away down the street, he looked back at the house confused. “So if that’s the living room,” he said pointing to the front window, “Which room is that?” pointing to the next door (attached) neighbour’s front window. I had to explain that was someone else’s house attached on to the side!

Same boyfriend, we met some of my home town friends, some were also at uni, some at college etc. I asked one friend what he was planning to do when his college course ended that summer. “Oh I’ll probably have to sign on for a bit” he said. “Sign on to what?” Asked my (then) boyfriend

I was also shocked to discover that boyfriend was a Tory voter We had probably been seeing each other about a month before I found out, I had just taken it for granted that everyone voted labour and I’d never (knowingly) met a Tory before- I was 19 or 20. It makes sense now though!

This reminded me of when one of DD's school friends gave her a lift home in Y7.

At the time, we lived in a 3 bed, ex-LA house, on a court with 8 other houses / bungalows. We were joined to a bungalow on one side and then first floor only to the other side,,with an alleyway below. There was then another house joined on the left. So 4 houses in a U shape, with another 2 blocks of 2 opposite forming the courtyard IYSWIM. DD's friend looked confused and asked why her house had so many doors. DD had to explain that only one of them was ours 😂.

I had no idea about regional differences in house prices. A new girl came to our school from Yorkshire and she said her mother cried when she found out that all they could afford in our area was a 2 bed terrace which opened on to the street when in Yorkshire they had a four bedroom detached house with a big garden. I thought she was making it up, but now I know it was true.
I also didn't know that people rented houses. Our house was a very modest terraced house and I envied people who lived on the Council estate with lovely green spaces at the front and gardens and upstairs bathrooms. My mother said people rented them and we didn't qualify, and I was so disappointed.

[quote MagicSummer]@tomorrowalready - that's interesting re the Latin and other subjects. I was privately educated and started French when I was 7 and Latin at 9. Loved both subjects and can't understand why Latin isn't taught now. Amazing how it can be so useful if you want to know where words come from, etc. (there's one!).[/quote]
Quite a few academy chains teach Latin. It’s back in fashion

We had very little of anything growing up. Never had new shop bought clothes- my mum would knock us up matching skirts on her sewing machine. My dad fished and hunted rabbits for meat and occasionally he would poach deer and pheasants from a local estate. He worked on farms sometimes and we would always eat well then, he'd come home with eggs, milk, big boxes of veg that didn't sell at the farmers markets. We used to pick wild blackberries and sloes and damsons. We would take all the overhanging fruit from other people's fruit trees. Up the railway track was a house that never seemed to pick their fruit! They had plum, pear, apple and cherry trees that hung right over onto the path. My mum would make crumbles and jam. We grew rhubarb, gooseberries and strawberries. We never had things like pizza, brownies, takeaways. My mum baked all the time, we ate things like roast dinner and stew. We didn't have name branded anything at all. I remember when I was about , after my parents had split up, I lived with my mum and she bought me a pair of Nike trainers from her catalogue. I felt so thrilled and like I finally fitted in during PE. My best friend (still my best friend) could buy new trainers every month if she fancied them.

Are irrelevant if the family background means that these things are not valued and accessed. Like sure start centres which were meant to level things up but in many cases became a free children’s activity centre for the MC whilst the non engaged families carried on as they were!

Sure Start centred were meant to attract across the board based on research that said that mixing MC children with more socially deprived had a positive impact on early outcomes. You had target families but but very much open to all

Our SureStart centre was great and attached families across the board. However it closed its doors last March and still hasn’t reopened as apparently it’s ‘not safe’. So the only free activities for children and toddlers in our small town are no longer available.

That was my experience of SS and one o'clock clubs too, plenty of MC people using it.

@MySecretHistory

Are irrelevant if the family background means that these things are not valued and accessed. Like sure start centres which were meant to level things up but in many cases became a free children’s activity centre for the MC whilst the non engaged families carried on as they were!

Sure Start centred were meant to attract across the board based on research that said that mixing MC children with more socially deprived had a positive impact on early outcomes. You had target families but but very much open to all

Just because they meant to, doesn’t mean they did.

I've only ever had one completely other worldly experience. When my son was at pre-school he got a party invite, the address was only a house name and village, no street name or number, I didn't know the village well, thought maybe it only had one or two roads, but no, it had at least half a dozen, just that this house was big enough that it was easy to find. The Au pair answered the door, I had been planning to drop and run as I had my older child too, but we were all welcomed in and offered food and drinks and they were happy for my 6 year old to join in. This house had 3 gardens, all of them huge.

One mum was explaining how upset she was to miss out on concert tickets as they'd sold out, some big artist, Ed Sheeran maybe, another mum gave her the number of someone she new who had lots of contacts and could often get sold out tickets! Still no idea who this person might have been, but the idea that contacts can get access to things like that? Then an ice cream can arrived, they'd hired it for the party, there were less than a dozen kids and they and all the adults got to have whatever they wanted!

The child whose party it was went to a prep school and I never saw them again. I am quite comfortably middle class and have been poor, I've met a wide range of people, but this was the only experience of super rich that I've had up close. Still don't quite understand how people can afford massive homes and expensive schools and expensive cars and holidays.

Im a teacher, A few years ago a parent explained to me that she had stopped her kids having friends over because they kept eating so much and she couldn't afford it. Broke my heart. She explained it like it was entirely an every day experience.

I didn't get to have Chinese/Indian food until my late teens as my dad would never entertain it and my mum wouldn't have known what to order, and we just didn't get takeaways that often, or if we did it was fish and chips. But after my late teens I tried all sorts of food.

It still surprised me though when meeting other mums from school, so in our thirties by then, that more than one person in the group had never had Mexican food when we went to restaurant- and I don't mean particularly authentic stuff, I mean like basic Tex Mex fare, fahitas and the like. This was only a few years ago, but this and a few other things made me check my privilege, I guess, even though I was from a working class background and think of myself as extremely ordinary.

Shocked to discover that at 16 some of my fellow school leavers had never seen the sea. We lived 15 miles north or south of the Cornish coasts.

Just read that it’s still true.

@BonnyBarb

Going to friend's houses at secondary school and they had showers. We just had a bath and one of the hoses you plugged in to the taps to wash our hair. They had pantene, we used hand soap sometimes and other times washing up liquid.

Kids at school that had numerous school uniform items. We had 2 shirts and 1 skirt each. We'd sink wash just the collar and arm pits every second day. The skirt had to last 3 years and then we got a new one for the last 3 years. They were never washed.

People with kitchen roll and who drank cold drinks from glasses. We drank everything from cups.

Families who put the dinner food in the middle of the table and you could take your own portions! This blew my mind.

Nice furnishings, chosen for their aesthetics. Ours were simply functional and all second hand.

@BonnyBarb this was my life - the washing up liquid for shampoo especially resonates!