shh wrote:

Agrippina wrote:I promise there's no offence intended. Pure observation.

I'd check for selection bias.

Actually you're perfectly right being classist is as bad as being racist.
And I didn't mean to do that.
On that test i'm Middle Class myself, which is where I would put myself anyway. My irritation is more with the petty-mindedness of people who care what other people are wearing and whether their shoes are fashionable.

Anyway, let's move on. I've asked for this thread to be deleted as I really don't like offending people. I'm a lover not a fighter.

Well hang on, can you really just ask for a thread to be deleted, thus taking with it all the discussion that's happened therein? That seems a little unfair.

I'm not going to take the test since I don't actually know the difference between morning suits, dinner jackets or lounge dress (or whatever way around the second word goes ). Generally this is focused on British culture, which doesn't really apply to me.

The distinction between what you say when you didn't hear has always been interesting to me. I say "what?" without thinking, "pardon?" if I'm being polite. I find "what" does sound rude because it is so short and abrupt, but I'm fine with using it colloquially. With pardon, you have to take a little more time so it automatically sounds a little kinder on the ear. The whole thing about being upper class in the UK is not being aspirant. Whereas Middle Class people are generally trying to be impressive (to separate themselves from the lower class, I presume) which is why all these stereotypes get employed like the "keeping up with the joneses" which I've never actually seen but I guess applies very broadly. The Upper Class knows that whatever they do, they are splendid (heh). And so they can say "what?!" with impunity.

Lower class people, like the stereotypes Agrippina employed on the page before, are presumably at the other end. Like many people who've worked very hard in bad conditions, they have become proud of what they have done and resent the implication that they might want to improve their status.

I do actually suspect that in Britain there is a bit of a change in attitude towards education due to class. We in Canada are very aware in the poor behaviour of pupils there. I want to give an example that I found quite telling.

I just finished teacher's college and on the last day we had a student who graduated last year tell us about his experience. He got a job in a school in East London, where most of the students were of Bangladeshi origin, most of them what I would call either first or second generation immigrants (that is to say, people who were naturalised or people whose parents were naturalised). He had a terrible time. The behaviour, he said, was ghastly. He could barely contact the parents because they didn't speak English. We are unprepared for this because we don't get that behaviour here. Unfortunately, he had to leave the school.

Literally a week later, I was completing and internship and the man I was working with was telling me that his favourite school to go to was a East-end (Toronto) school with a very heavy Bangladeshi background-- similarly, of first and second generation Canadians. The students, he said, although poor, were very quiet and well-behaved and very eager to learn. They didn't get too many parents to help (this is a science workshop program) because the parents didn't speak much English.

Wow! What a compelling observation! In one country, the same group of people are having a terrible time in terms of prospects and behaviour. In the second, they are notable for their prospects and behaviour.

I have two explanations:
1) These are people coming from two different Bangladeshi backgrounds and experiences.
2) The culture of the country or class itself is influencing the behaviour of the children.

I don't 'have any experience of teaching in the UK, yet (!), but I'm interested to see what, if any, influence the class system has on the children's attitudes towards school, learning and self-improvement. I was rather shocked, for example, that 2/3 of the new cabinet are graduates from two universities (I'll let you guess which ones) and that 37% of the HoC went to private school, 20 of them to one school (again, I'll let you pick the school). And the percentages are getting higher (again, after dropping in the 90s)! This, to me, is problematic.

I actually can't find statistics for the Canadian parliament which suggests to me one of two things: our journalism is poorer (it is) and that there aren't any really shocking statistics about cabinet members except that they're usually old white men. Of the six I just did a background investigation of my own, none attended the same university, or even mostly the universities considered the "top" universities in Canada.They're conservative, in case you think that makes a difference.

For me, this is telling. If you're taking the wealthy out of the public system, you're losing a lot of the boyancy from the schools. You're losing a lot of the important parent involvement, the spirit of success and vitality. The mixture of experiences about what kind of foods we eat or what our attitudes are towards science and other abstract forms of learning.

Anyway, I hope this thread doesn't get deleted. I think we can take being offended once in a while to have an interesting argument/discussion.

It's not going to be deleted for the reasons you mentioned.
The sensitivity is mine. I try to be a "nice' person and I don't feel good when I've offended someone, put it down to age, a lifetime of encouragement rather than denigration of the children I've nurtured, and just my good nature, so I was a little embarrassed that I might have hurt some feelings. So no, it's not going to be deleted, but I did delete some of what, with retrospect I realised could come across as being insulting. So, hopefully, I'm forgiven, and I'll really try to be nicer in future, I promise.