Why should going to Eton make you less part of 'real life'?

[MayDayMayDay]

I have friends who went to Eton and other leading private/boarding schools. Between them they have: children at state schools, cancer, children with disabilities, been made redundant, parents with dementia, been unable to afford a house, become alcoholic, suffered marriage breakdowns, lost family in accidents, voted Labour, worried about the future...

We all have different experiences of life. Who really thinks one life is more 'real' than another? I might vote for David Cameron, I might not. Whatever I vote it will have nothing to do with where any of the party leaders went to school. I'll leave those considerations to all the snobs who can't recognise themselves as such.

lincstash - I enjoyed reading what you said. Are you a historian? Social and economic history is fascinating.

Perhaps a slight nuance but I have been thinking about this in the post-industrial City I live in. It will be a key Lab-Con swing seat at the election.

There is a large section of the population that lives on benefits. It is quite a depressed place economically. In the old days those people would have all worked in the local industry, gone off to war or been in shops/domestic service. The major industry died 30 years ago, the armed forces stil recruits here but needs trained professionsals not just bodies and domestic/shop work is minimum wage that is barely worth more than benefits. Hence a large section of my City is trapped on benefits and defines what was the old 'working class'.

The aristocracy in my City were really the big land owners that lived around and about. Their big houses stil exist but they have even split up into flats or sold off to rich City people as occassional country retreats. A new phenomenn though is the depletion of the middle class here. Many have moved away to work in the South East, the once thriving professional class of merchants, bankers, acocuntanst, doctors, lawyers, armed forces officers is now essentially retired and living on dwindling savings. Those younger middle class that stayed are heavily in debt - the so called coping class as it is now known. Thet are terrified of sending their DCs to the frankly awful state schools but struggle to pay for private school out of desperation.

I see another potentially massive social shift coming through Britain like it did in the 1930s. I thnk what Cameron is trying to do is appeal to that 'coping class' throughout Britain, not recreate the aristocracy or pander to a few rich folk. Just not sure he has got that message through though.

I think the class system is still strong but takes different forms according to where you live.

When I lived back up north there was a very strong working class contingent, most of my friends were working class. I think the same of where my family roots are in the East End of London.

Now we have moved south the class system is rife in a different manner. Everywhere seems to be divided between land owners and it seems almost feudal. People are so deferential to people simply on the basis of how much land they own. It amazes me to hear students talk about the local landowners as if they are some kind of mini God, even students who see themselves as almost rebellious. We are the only people we know in out immediate area who state educate, we are seen as quite rebellious for making that choice. I am very aware of my working class traits having moved away from home. It is fascinating for people watching.

I agree with seeker that wealth and the ensuing privilege will not stop real life hitting you with it's shitty stick, but it helps clean you up. It is the teflon suit if you like.

Cancer - see the top cons, know that if that you are having a problem you've got a phone call and action coming, not yet another msg being left for the cons secretary who never calls you back. Divorce - lot easier to deal with when money gives you freedom. State school - very diff experience when money buys you a house opposite that outstanding ofsted primary, and indeed you know that you can pull the plug at any time. It gives you choice.

And many many people don't have those choices and just struggle and struggle. I wish we could be led by the best of the best, rather than those with the most of the most. If those things coincide then great, but I fear that it's not always the case. However, I don't believe this to be exclusive to one political party.

The class definitions may have changed, but there is still a definite divide.

The saddest thing IMO is some people think that the class other than the one they belong to doesn't exist.

@Miggsie

Right. But how did those peopel get the power and wealth in the first place? because it goes all the way back to hunter/gatherer society.

White middle aged men didnt pull some of of con trick on everyone else. The railways we built by men, because working class men were best adapted for the work. Women reared children, because they didnt have the skills to bring down and kill a Wooly Mammoth. Stockbrokers arent stockbrokers because they tricked there way in, there stockbrokers because there good at it.

Thats how society evolved. Darwinian selection. Im quite sure if some woman had come along with the appropriate physical and mental skill to achieve, then Hitler or Napolean or Genghis Khan might have been a woman. Boadicea was.

So lets drop this veiled implication that white middle class men got where they did by stealth or trickery. Plenty of men pulled themselves out the gutter to make it big, and so did plenty of women.

Theres no sleight of hand here. An appropriately skilled woman could have started the Industrial Revolution, rather the John Trevithik, but there wasnt one around at the time. Margaret Thatcher, on the other hand, was around, and got to the top of the Topry party in the days when it was 99% white middle aged men. Horses for courses and he that dares wins etc.

And class and money have become very separate. People can now have as much money as 'the ruling class' used to and "the ruling class" less - but they are still the "ruling class' because of their effortless assumption of superiority.

It can be seperate , I am a working class person with an above average income. However most of my family live below the povery line and have done so for generations. The two are often linked.

I know a lot of stockbrokers, bankers etc, many are in that career because that is what their parents did and it was expected of them.

Do you think so, seeker?

I thought that actually over the last few years the income disparity has widened: Nationally and globally.

In fact, what we have seen emerge is a global 'ruling class' - some of whom are based in Britain - and influence our national government.

The disparity between these and ... me, for example, is huge. And there is a smaller, but still large, disparity between the people at the bottom of a nation like England, and the well-off. Making any idea of fluidity crazy.

I, personally, think the link between vast sums of money and ruling class has become very strong again. Nationally, certainly, but globally --- insanely so.

Oh, and I forgot to say, the links between income and power, and access to power is, I think, as strong as ever.

@ BeenBeta

The middle classes have always been the Debted class. Even in Victorian times, the middle class put on the outward appearance of the prosperity and respectability, whilst being as poor as a church mouse and up to there necks in debt from social climbing, such as send there children to posh school, its still the same story 150 years later.

@seeker

Exactly. The class struggle has turned into the struggle between the haves and have nots, and its not the same war as the classic orwellian class war, the working class vs the old money aristocracy. Almost anyone can be a have or have not these days.

@ animula

The circle of links is between Wealth - Education - Power. Get one, you can get the other two.

thats partially why the middle classes expanded after WW2, that and consumerism.

Lincstash so much of your last post is bollocks I hardly know where to start. I have the mental skills to answer you quite well but unfortunately I am typing one-handed with a baby on my lap and keep having to rush off to attend to a potty-training 3 yo.

1. stockbrokers are stockbrokers because of a combination of having the skills and the social exclusivity of the profession in the past (to a large degree) and to a lesser extent today. 2.

women also laboured on the construction of the railways, and indeed, children - I can believe they were designed 100% by men but not built.

1. we know very little about social structure when people were hunting woolly mammoth - it's entirely possible for instance that all the young fit people in the tribe were involved in the hunting while the old people looked after the children. We just don't know.
2. in general - there is a whole history of (white) men using various tricks to exclude women from jobs some of them actually had the skills to do. It's called patriarchy. Sometimes there won't have been women with appropriate skills, in some cases there will but they didn't get the opportunity.

Women today frequently drop out of careers NOT because they don't have the skills but because they are the ones that have the babies.

I meant L's 11.41 post

1. If i gave you 100,000 whats the chances you can make it £1M? very little unless you were intensively schooled. Thats why you're not a stockbroker.

1. women indeed tagged along as camp follwers. Show me one single photo or account of a female victorian canal labourer or railway worker. When they built such capital projects they brought there families with them, and built camps for them.

3.True, but theres no evidence to suggest it works any differently than the accounts of still primitive tribes documented in the last 200 years.

4.Exactly, see point 2. Otherwise all this running round claiming you cant have a career because all the nasty white men stop you is feminist bollox.

Look at Blairs Babes - over promoted and given special treatment and jobs they wouldnt have gotten normally, and what a dreary untalented bunch they turned out to be, especially the likes of Hazel Blears, Harriet Harman and Jacqui Smith. Good men were prevented for getting those positions and doing a better job because the the feminst crap that pervades the Labour party. The country got short changed with a bunch of useless duffers instead.

are you trying to be the new Xenia?

Lets face it, if you vote for anyone of the "big 3" leaders you are voting for someone who went to a public school, OK so Eton (wouldn't be my choice of public school but so be it.

The one thing about public school is that when these boys were all there they got the roundest and best possible education that was available at the time. State Education has changed somewhat since their time, hopefully for the better. In 20 years time I think that we will see leaders who are more from the state system than the public school system. I also think it is a weak argument and rather petty to bring in school as a reason NOT to vote for a party, I think life experience tops all that which imho just leaves labour and conservative as I don't believe that Nick Clegg has as much life experience as the other two, but none of them know what it is like to be some of us and they never will. I don't believe there are any politicians who do know what that is like and I think that recent C4 documentary highlighted that throughout the parties. I think you have to vote for the person that makes you feel most comfortable in doing something that appeals to you, lets face it whatever any of them say they won't follow through with it so it makes bugger all difference to vote on promises. I do think it is time for a fresh start for the country but who should do that (new leader of the labour party, lib dems or conservatives or a hung party) I haven't quite made up my mind yet. (I just don't think I can put a tick next to GB as he irritates me that he nominated himself as leader of the labour party, but I will closely look at the local mp's and make my decision that way).

On a tangent, do they currently choose the party on the total amount of votes throughout the country or is it still by elected mp's? I believe it was always done by elected mp's which doesn't really reflect the whole view of the whole country does it? If 20 million vote, and 10 mill vote one way, 6 vote another and the remainder a third party but the party with 6 mill votes gets in because of the amount of mp's they have got elected seems not to represent us as the public. I am really glad to be proved differently and am genuinely interested to know if anyone can tell me in laymans quickie terms how it works!

lincstash is a man, no? can't see Xenia arguing that the reason women weren't integral to the Industrial Revolution was because there weren't any appropriately skilled women around. What with women being considered the equals of men in all ways in the 19th Century.

If i had school age kids i would try and avoid at all costs sending them to state schools, the standard of education is now dreadful beyond words.

When i left school in the lat 1960's, I could do maths, I could write an essay, read a book, and i knew a bit about geography, the history of these islands and a fair bit about woodwork and metalwork.

The kids that come out of state schools today by comparison are utterly uneducated. Indeed, many companies and unis complain they have to run remedial courses to bring there basic skill up to scratch. And most of them know nothing about history or geography.

A Levels are a farce. Its the exam you cant fail, and what use is an exam you cant fail? You might was just everyone an 3 A level certificates when they start secondary school. Compared toa 1970 A level paper, modern ones are a piece of piss, i and most of my schoolmates of the time could have done a modern A level paper at the age of about 13.

oops sloppy tying "might was just " = "might as well just give"

:D

Just because it's Friday, I'm going to be lured completely off-piste by the feminist-baiter.

OFF-PISTE ALERT

So, for much of history, and much of present-day reality, if considered globally, the struggle for mere existence and continuation has been gruelling. If you don't believe me, read "The Bohemians" - the section on cooking in the Edwardian period.

From a Darwinian perspective, which is most important? Making sure the young survive to reproduce or inventing cultural prosthetics (the wheel, political systems)?
Ans: Both.

Of course, those whose job it has been to ensure basic reproduction have been rendered largely invisible and unsung in history. The only monument to their numbers is basically the swelling of the species.

But, hey, it's taken a long, long time (a testament to just how hard it was to ensure that basic survival for sooo much of our history), but now, in some place on the planet (and let's remember, it's only some places) and for some groups, there are enough cultural prosthetics about to free large groups from the basic struggle of reproduction. But it is very, very recent.

Of course, there are women who have contributed to the field of the creation of cultural prosthetics, and of course they are limited in number. It's been said countless times, but they tended to be the ones who were free of the task of reproduction.

Seriously, I hate the fact that your post seems to be oblivious to how important that role was, how vital and time-consuming. It consumed whole lives because it was bloody difficult, but so necessary it was worth the sacrifice of entire lives. We wouldn't be here without it.

Your blindness repeats an enormous historical condescension towards the enormity of that task. not surprising since writing history falls into the arena of cultural prosthetics. As does the task of valuing, sadly.

But I do foresee a future where the former reproducers are going to seriously make a mark in the field of cultural prosthetics.

Im sorry but Etonians are a breed apart. I have friends who went to other exclusive public schools, but men who went to Eton have a unique arrogance. They are imbued with the sense that they are superior.

And, you know, what about all those men who wasted that time, earned for them by the women reproducers, and money, inventing loads of crap? Stuff that was pointless, or harmful, or morally wrong?

Let's put them into this story of Great White Men who gave the silly un-evolved persons Culture.

Because then the noise-signal ration goes waaay up - and they don't look so bloody great then.

Aaaaand - inventions are rarely invented in a vacuum, without history. They are incremental innovations of existing forms, often. Or the movement of an object from one context to another. OR their potential is unlocked by multiple actors, as it is put in use, and its use expanded - by those little (presumably brainless) workers.

Eg kirby grip - husband watched wife putting dents in her hair pins.

Eg steam engine - what's his name watched mother 'pressurising' her cooking pot.

Lincs you are on a wind up.

I have one school aged child and we are very proud to have her in the state sector and have turned down repeated offers to pay her fees. Some state schools are awful but you cannot write them all off in that manner.

I would like you to meet my students and walk away saying they are uneducated. Utter tosh.

I agree completely. The single basic reason we are here is to promulgate the species. To that end the best division of labour is you have the kids and care for them, and ill built the hut and kill wolly mammoths. Thats because im physically bigger and stronger than you, and you have the bodily equipment to initiate reproduction. Doesnt make my role any better than your, or vice versa, its just the way it is. But the best person for the job did the job, thats the most sensible division of tasks, and thats what happened for the last 3 million years.

Its wasnt a cunning devious plan by White Male Cro-Magnons to manipulate the species.........

@ Animula - You mean Thomas Newcomen, and the Atmospheric Engine? James Watt was just a follower-on. Newcomen was the true father of the Industrial Revolution, and Trevithik was the fahter of the railways.