A primary classroom. Photo: Photo: www.audio-luci-store.it / flickr CC.
Class and education
Tommy Gee believes education is critical to achieve a more equal society
Academics, scholars, thinkers and clever people are seen as a class apart: a meritocracy distinguished by the mind and intellect and often unconcerned about worldly matters.
The wealthy comprise another class, their wealth often flaunted, sometimes ostentatiously, but sometimes concealed in a Swiss Bank or squirrelled offshore in a convenient tax haven. Some of the masses in the middle display their status with a Sunday-polished car, the right house located in a good school catchment area, by their dress or speech – either BBC or a local dialect.
Today, there are still plenty of signs of class. Do you say napkins or serviettes; lunch or dinner; settee or sofa; lavatory or toilet; lady or woman; mrs or ms?
Most people are able, intuitively, to detect social class at first encounter. The use of the word ‘sir’ still occurs, but not the doffing of hats or tugging of forelocks. Curtseying to the monarch is still encouraged.
Is it possible to achieve a classless society where everyone is equal? If so, what changes are required to move towards this utopian ideal? We are making slow but steady progress with gender and ethnicity, and inherited wealth and status is eroding, albeit very slowly.
Divisions of wealth and income, however, are widening. Power is more centralised and consolidated and the mechanisms to handle globalisation and the relocation of capital and labour are ineffectual. Not only is wealth concealed, but competition for skills leads both to brain drain and high pay. Nations have given free rein to the market by loosening controls and by competing rather than cooperating with other nations. This raises prices.
Under Servius Tullius, Roman society was divided into six orders, or classes, for taxation purposes. Here in the UK we classify people in the census with descriptors for economic and social purposes according to their employment: labelling us either A, B, C 1-2, D or E. I am uncertain where celebrities and footballers were located.
Class persists in many forms. There is the master and servant, also the employer-employee relationship, and upstairs-downstairs lingers on.
Recently, the word ‘pleb’ was revived, and an MP referred to the Tory ‘posh’ boys. Class may link to the exercise of power, with hierarchies at all levels. There are many examples: the civil service; the army; the police; the church; caste and tribal systems; lords and commons; and our aristocracy.
To what extent do we benefit from a more equal society and, if so, what measures can be adopted without damaging the spur of competition?
Education in the UK is divisive, and a single system that does not differentiate between class would be a major step forward. Will the new academies become private schools in competition with the old ones, enjoying the same resources and support from the state and a genuine common entrance through equalised (not catchment area) entrance systems that bring together rich and poor in proportion and, not just token quotas, under one roof?
The chancellor has many ways at his disposal for ensuring that wealth and income are distributed fairly and not skewed to favour those who, by their control of the means of production, claim and secure the lion’s share.
Our built environment too often reflects the division of the classes. The sale of council houses, their transfer to housing authorities, affordable housing and enlightened planning to avoid deprived ghettoes all help, but the historical legacy remains.
Our social responsibility for the education of human beings of whatever class requires policies of equality (Quaker faith & practice 23.73). Action on this could be a major contribution to the foundation of a more equal society.
