Let's have a class thread! It'll be fun!

[littlebabyjesus]

Ah yes, being in line for an inheritance is a big dividing line too. Examine a lot of so-called 'self-made' people, and you very often find that they got their businesses started with an inheritance or a loan from their parents.

 

[frogwoman]

Because you're attaching a negative/insulting connotations to the term "middle class"!

We always seem to talk about working class and middle class here and that's it. It's like MacDonalds having regular and large, what ever happened to small!?

My definition shifts what we (generally) refer to as middle class to 'upper class' and splits what we refer to as working class into middle class and working class (differentiated by levels of wealth, which are both in turn differentiated by my upper class by the ability to influence the political process)

So don't be too hard on yourself!

That's also a good post. I think I am sometimes


I would also dispute the idea tho that the working class are at the "bottom of society" even if we're defining working class on the way it seems to be on this thread tho. There are people who are probably in a worse position in terms of precarity etc than most people who work, I'm thinking of people who for whatever reason are long term unemployed etc, with little social support or anything like that and with very little prospect of that ever changing.

 

[stethoscope]

I wouldn't mind the 'self made' people, if they didn't then use that as a stick to beat other people.

 

[gunneradt]

This should of course be 'Nonsense - it's a 7 year-old's grammar.'

You thick fuck.

Dopey has piped up again

 

[gunneradt]

I think they don't really want a lot of those courses and institutions to exist, in their current form, anyway. How does Leeds Met compete for students when Leeds Uni is only charging £500 more a term?

Polys will always take the cast offs that aren't good enough to get into universities. If anyone thinks a degree from some of the poly cum university portakabins is any good, try getting a job with it.

 

[stethoscope]

Polys will always take the cast offs that aren't good enough to get into universities. If anyone thinks a degree from some of the poly cum university portakabins is any good, try getting a job with it.

0/10.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I wouldn't mind the 'self made' people, if they didn't then use that as a stick to beat other people.

Exactly. I don't blame people for taking loans from their families to do stuff! I would if I could. What I dislike intensely about this kind of discussion is when people, whichever way they are slicing the pie, start assigning moral virtues to it.

 

[frogwoman]

to be fair that's an element of truth in what he says. there is dfefinitely a "hierarchy" in terms of university stuff etc. as many of my mates are now discovering.

 

[stethoscope]

to be fair that's an element of truth in what he says. there is dfefinitely a "hierarchy" in terms of university stuff etc. as many of my mates are now discovering.

There's certainly a hierarchy yes, and I've encountered it even within FE as my first degree was from an 'ex-poly'. But, I'm dubious that was the point of gunner's little comment.

 

[ymu]

Working class is just better?

is it though? really?

I'd rather be a lay about toff than middle class TBF. But you know. I'd rather be a middle class proffessional than a working class drone. In terms of more influence over the work I get to do. Given that working isn't optional.

For what values of "better"?

Working-class, sink school kids who get to Oxford are, by definition than almost all of their peers (and probably none - Oxford had no free school meal kids in the last intake - and I'm betting the increase in state school intake is due to rich kids reduced to state school by the recession - they fraudulated the black student statistics so badly that Cameron accidentally outed them by quoting them verbatiim and causing confuddlement on Twitter that just had to be explained by some folk who have been watching this saga unfold for a while ).

So yeah. "Why are they automatically better?!" I hear you screech. Because with those levels of discrimination, you have to be a fucking freak of brain-cell design to get anywhere near the place. Send your kid to Eton, and it has a default 33% chance of getting a place before intelligence academic diligence (aka nerdiness/ambition) even need be ranked to determine which third get the gig.

In any given context where discrimination can be overcome by sheer blinding merit, those that make it inside the walls are going to be the very best of the very best because they are the best of the 50,000 kids who are better than every single one of your classmates (barring the occasional throwback toff with a functioning brain and genuinely talented working- and middle-class kids who had no real special help or hindrance, they just set a goal that interested them and earned the opportunity of a lifetime.

(I'm none of these, I don't count, I have the luck of the devil - my school loved Oxbridge candidates, but laughed at me when I said I was going to apply. I think I got in because the elderly economics dude fell asleep in my interview and when they woke him up to ask me a question he said there was no point because I clearly wasn't interested in economics. I gave him a brief lecture on the illogicality of this assumption when I had applied for economics at the only other university in the country that offered PPE but otherwise could not fill out the rest of the form without making one of my three interviewers think I wasn't interested in their subject before they'd even met me (or limit my chances of university bv foregoing three other opportunities). I was an all sciences A Level student who could not get in any other way than via an interview, with no way of knowing what I will choose to study the most because I am applying to do three brand new subjects to me, and I was being blocked because only one other university offers the course I want to do? How does that work then? I don't know whether they sought legal advice before giving me an offer, but I think it was because the economics dude was a vacant old fascist whose underqualified wife got the first year politics gig and the guy was universally hated. Or economics dude had a thing for being told off by big bolshy women. I can't fathom it. My predicted A Level grades were really, really bad (given that I was applying for Oxford), and this was at a time when the standard offer for my course was ABB, not three A*. Told you I had the luck of the devil).

 

[frogwoman]

good post.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Sounds like you are typical of people who go to Oxbridge, though, ymu, in one very important respect at least. You had teachers who thought it was possible – that's a huge hurdle for many, that there isn't a 'way-in' through people who probably themselves went through the process.

That's another aspect - another whole layer - to class: how does your self-perception affect your aspirations. Do you think that 'people like me' do that kind of thing? Do you see 'people like me' doing that kind of thing.

It's a very important form of socialisation, I think, and from what I've seen, if nothing else, for instance, kids who go to private schools leave believing that 'people like me' can do pretty much anything.

 

[gunneradt]

0/10.

but true

 

[_angel_]

Polys will always take the cast offs that aren't good enough to get into universities. If anyone thinks a degree from some of the poly cum university portakabins is any good, try getting a job with it.

Um did you read my post about the polys making higher A level grade offers? They offer totally different types of courses, of course.

 

[frogwoman]

That's another aspect - another whole layer - to class: how does your self-perception affect your aspirations. Do you think that 'people like me' do that kind of thing? Do you see 'people like me' doing that kind of thing.

It's a very important form of socialisation, I think, and from what I've seen, if nothing else, for instance, kids who go to private schools leave believing that 'people like me' can do pretty much anything.

yep.

 

[love detective]

You had teachers who thought it was possible

Or even schools - the secondary school I went to was nothing more than a holding pen for kids to hang around in until they turned 16 (or in some cases 15) and were taken onto a YTS - university and further education was an alien concept to us from a very early age - and this was a result of the education system itself. at a young age this breeds a contempt for and suspicion of both education itself and the educated

as for this thread, class (in any useful sense of the word) isn't about defining particular individuals, it's about social relationships, roles, and structures - can never understand this obsession with methodological individualism in relation to stuff like this on places like here

 

[Blagsta]

Polys will always take the cast offs that aren't good enough to get into universities. If anyone thinks a degree from some of the poly cum university portakabins is any good, try getting a job with it.

You think i won't get a nursing job in 3 years cos i am studying at an ex poly? What evidence do you base this on?

 

[audiotech]

'There was masters an' servants an' servants an' dogs
They taught you how to touch your cap
But through strikes an' famine an' war an' peace
England never closed this gap'

The Clash - 'Something About England'

 

[TremulousTetra]

Unlike most class threads, I'm going to start with a definition of what I mean by class.

In common with the majority of posts on class threads, the definition I'm using it a bit ... well, different.

So is this one 'different' in a good way or a bad way, and how would you deal with it snappily to cover what you consider the core issues?

---------

If your fortunes are pegged to continued generous patronage by the financial and political elites, then you are middle class.

If your working life more resembles the purchase, warehousing, sale and disposal of an inanimate commodity, then you are working-class.

But anyone who has to work for a living is working-class by definition, so it's up to you to work out which side your bread is really buttered.

---------

I'm not saying it's a great start, but there are places I post where if you use the word class, people get all weird and the Citizen Smith gags come out (yeah, it's an old crowd, which makes it even worse). It inhibits discussion to lack a clear and simple definition that any apolitical fool can grasp.

Halp?

If you own and/or control the means of producing things, factories, land, offices [intellectual products] etc, you are ruling class.
If you sell your Labour you are working class.
If you sell your Labour, but have control over your work process and or the work process of others, you are middle-class.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

So a factory shop steward is middle class, and a teacher is working class, then. Simple definitions like that don't work, I don't think. The situation is too complex.

What do you mean by 'control over your work process'? Very few people have complete control over their work processes. Lots of people have varying degrees of control.

Also, the amount of money you earn has to come into it. A train driver on 40k a year may have pretty much zero control over their 'work processes', but they earn considerably more than many people who do have varying degrees of control. A pilot may earn 100k but effectively have no more control over their 'work processes' than a bus driver.

 

[_angel_]

If you own and/or control the means of producing things, factories, land, offices [intellectual products] etc, you are ruling class.
If you sell your Labour you are working class.
If you sell your Labour, but have control over your work process and or the work process of others, you are middle-class.

Still too simple! What if you are a carer, or unemployed?

 

[frogwoman]

Or even schools - the secondary school I went to was nothing more than a holding pen for kids to hang around in until they turned 16 (or in some cases 15) and were taken onto a YTS - university and further education was an alien concept to us from a very early age - and this was a result of the education system itself. at a young age this breeds a contempt for and suspicion of both education itself and the educated

as for this thread, class (in any useful sense of the word) isn't about defining particular individuals, it's about social relationships, roles, and structures - can never understand this obsession with methodological individualism in relation to stuff like this on places like here

good post.

 

[weltweit]

Polys will always take the cast offs that aren't good enough to get into universities. If anyone thinks a degree from some of the poly cum university portakabins is any good, try getting a job with it.

Erm, fail! I did a vocational degree at a Polytechnic and it was a fantastic door openner into work for me and 95% of the students on the course.

I would actually suggest the opposite is true, vocational Polytechnic courses are designed to get you into work, academic courses at Universities are not!

I would not swap my vocational degree for any academic one.

 

[weepiper]

There's no place for women/mothers except as the partners of men in the traditional class definition.

 

[LLETSA]

I wouldn't have gone, simple as that.

The tories don't want former polys full of lower middle class plebs.

They do, and they know thatmiddle class kids will find some way of paying the inflated fees (or, more accurately, their parents will). This is because university/polyversity is a useful method of parking kids away from the dwindling jobs market for a few years. There's nothing for kids to leave school for now, by and large. McJobs and retail or call centres, which make up the bulk of the jobs market, with their low pay and bad conditions, don't even satisfy most working class kids nowadays, never mind the middle classes. Why do you think they started paying kids to go to college?

Everybody's a child until they're about 23 now.

 

[_angel_]

There's no place for women/mothers except as the partners of men in the traditional class definition.

Yeah any type of caring work seems to be exempt, because women don't really count (it's always "what your dad did", never your mum for some reason)

 

[_angel_]

They do, and they know thatmiddle class kids will find some way of paying the inflated fees (or, more accurately, their parents will). This is because university/polyversity is a useful method of parking kids away from the dwindling jobs market for a few years. There's nothing for kids to leave school for now, by and large. McJobs and retail or call centres, which make up the bulk of the jobs market, with their low pay and bad conditions, don't even satisfy most working class kids nowadays, never mind the middle classes. Why do you think they started payingkids to go to college.

Everybody's a child until they're about 23 now.

Are you suggesting my parents would have paid the fees?? This is my point, they couldn't and I would have been put off going, so you insisting that lower mc won't be put off, is actually not true at all. The whole point of the exercise is to put them off!
I am trying to make a distinction between lower middle class and proper moneyed middle class. No way could my parents have paid also, even with grants I got put off from studying down south because I was scared of the debt.

eta: we already have graduates working in call centres etc as it is...

 

[LLETSA]

Class is complicated, even if you restrict it purely to economics.

It really isn't when you consider what I said about being working class making you innately superior. That's how simple the matter is.

 

[LLETSA]

Are you suggesting my parents would have paid the fees?? This is my point, they couldn't and I would have been put off going, so you insisting that lower mc won't be put off, is actually not true at all. The whole point of the exercise is to put them off!
I am trying to make a distinction between lower middle class and proper moneyed middle class. No way could my parents have paid also, even with grants I got put off from studying down south because I was scared of the debt.

eta: we already have graduates working in call centres etc as it is...

I don't know what your parents would have done. But I believe that most lower middle class parents will pay them as, like I said, first of all there's nothing else out there for school leavers (nothing that will satisfy middle class aspirations and pretensions anyway), and secondly there's the popular view that you're worthless if you haven't been to university.

This is why an increasing number of thick people are graduates.

Some graduates end up working in call centres precisely because there's nothing else.

 

[frogwoman]

my best mate at uni ended up working in a call centre and hasn't been able to find anything else.