Social Snobbery ( Archived) (446)

My personal opinion is that there is a class system existing still in England, will ALWAYS be a class system existing in England and the best thing to do, whatever country you are in, is just go your own way and deal with your own life.

In 1997, then prime minister Tony Blair pledged to create a "classless society" in which no group of people would prevail over another.

In recent years, social mobility, the expanding tertiary education sector and greater job flexibility have all been cited as examples of how "class" is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

But Dr Will Atkinson, from the University of Bristol, will argue today that the middle classes are still securing the best jobs and the best education.

His claims are backed up by a Government report earlier this week which concluded that the professions are becoming more and not less dominated by children of the wealthiest families.

In his presentation to the British Sociological Association's annual conference in Cardiff, Dr Atkinson will say that those whose parents have limited amounts of money, education and social connections have much narrower choice during their lives.
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During in-depth interviews with 55 people aged between 18 and 56 from a cross-section of society, he found that working-class people had less chance of getting into higher education because their parents had less money to spend on private education and were less able to pay university fees.

He discovered that even though the number of working class people at university had increased in the last 20 years, they are still relatively under-represented.

Only 13 per cent of people from working-class backgrounds go to university, compared to 44 per cent of people from middle-class backgrounds.

"The precise characteristics of the classes in terms of occupations, educational experiences and work life experiences has shifted with the social changes of the late 20th century," Dr Atkinson will say.

"But the fact that some are better educated, with more choice in their lives and with more money still persists, and this maintains class differences that are as wide as they were in the 1970s."

Controversially, Dr Atkinson argues that those with working-class parents miss out on the help with schoolwork provided by well-educated middle-class parents, and therefore tend to value more practical skills such as woodwork and sports.

He also claims that people with middle-class parents are more likely to develop a love of learning because of the extra time and money their parents devote to their education.

Another interesting issue on the thread topic of "Social" snobbery is that, irrespective of education, financial status, etc, there will always be an "In Crowd". People who band together, for no apparent reason other than they feel like it on that given day, in defiance of others.

That could also be construed as a version of snobbery, and there is no doubt that happens on here, and in life outside on a daily basis.

There's an implied snobbism in this guy's discussion of "best jobs and best education". How does he define "best"? Those that pay the most for the least amount of physical sweat?

There's also a pretty blatant snobbism in the fact that he can make more money going around conducting studies to "discover" the obvious (like that having more money allows you to do things that cost money such as going to expensive schools) than people who earn their money by doing back-breaking jobs.

Shaw's character Henry Higgins believed that the only thing that really distinguished members of one class from another was how they spoke English, aside from their clothing. The Eliza Doolittle experiment was to test that assumption.
Clean up a street urchin, give her nice clothes, but most importantly teach her to talk correctly, and she could pass for nobility.