Social mobility

Devon_Sailor

Morning all,

Rather than kick off another thread of tit-for-tatting, I thought I would see if we could spark some (hopefully not too partisan!) debate.

Whilst trawling some of the comments threads on today's news stories (no, not in the Hate Mail Moby! ), someone made the very interesting point that one of the great modern vehicles for social mobility today is (love it or hate it) the banking bonus. I'd never really thought of it like that before, but it makes sense - the driver is how good you are at something (making profit/deals) - and that is all that matters. They don't particularly care if you are an Eton Old Boy or a Cockney Wide Boy - as long as you rake in the cash :T

So, what do we all think are the biggest drivers of social mobility these days? What I find a little saddening, is that few of them involve education.

My initial offerings (in no particular order....)

1. Professional football. Stratospheric weekly earnings!
2. Other professional sport (a recognition that in the UK ate least, football is so far ahead of the rest of the pack it can hardly be seen).
3. City Banking/Trading - phenomenal bonuses for the top performers. Can be bumped into the league of what us mere mortals would consider to be "stinking rich" within months if talented/lucky!
4. Armed Forces. One of the few "traditional" movers still around. Not many places can provide such opportunity for guys leaving school with no GCSEs and through hard graft turn them out into senior officers and leaders, with qualifications up to their eyballs?
5. Entrepreneurship. Always has been; always will.
6. Politics? Perhaps a controversial choice - but this really is a job that you do not need any qualifications for. Plenty (on BOTH sides of the House) have come from poor backgrounds and have risen to the highest levels of Government.
7. Lottery win? A dream for the vast majority, but you only need to get it right once! I for one wouldn't kick £161million out of bed....:beer:
8. Celebrity. A definite "Newbie" - but look how many multi-million pound careers are being forged by talent show contestant's, reality TV boys and girls, and former glamour models!

Any more for any more??

Of course, this is based entirely on the popular media spin assumption that money equals social status. Simplistic yes but at least it gets the ball rolling....

Regards

D_S

Moby

Devon_Sailor wrote: »

Morning all,

Rather than kick off another thread of tit-for-tatting, I thought I would see if we could spark some (hopefully not too partisan!) debate.

Whilst trawling some of the comments threads on today's news stories (no, not in the Hate Mail Moby! ), someone made the very interesting point that one of the great modern vehicles for social mobility today is (love it or hate it) the banking bonus. I'd never really thought of it like that before, but it makes sense - the driver is how good you are at something (making profit/deals) - and that is all that matters. They don't particularly care if you are an Eton Old Boy or a Cockney Wide Boy - as long as you rake in the cash :T

So, what do we all think are the biggest drivers of social mobility these days? What I find a little saddening, is that few of them involve education.

My initial offerings (in no particular order....)

1. Professional football. Stratospheric weekly earnings!
2. Other professional sport (a recognition that in the UK ate least, football is so far ahead of the rest of the pack it can hardly be seen).
3. City Banking/Trading - phenomenal bonuses for the top performers. Can be bumped into the league of what us mere mortals would consider to be "stinking rich" within months if talented/lucky!
4. Armed Forces. One of the few "traditional" movers still around. Not many places can provide such opportunity for guys leaving school with no GCSEs and through hard graft turn them out into senior officers and leaders, with qualifications up to their eyballs?
5. Entrepreneurship. Always has been; always will.
6. Politics? Perhaps a controversial choice - but this really is a job that you do not need any qualifications for. Plenty (on BOTH sides of the House) have come from poor backgrounds and have risen to the highest levels of Government.
7. Lottery win? A dream for the vast majority, but you only need to get it right once! I for one wouldn't kick £161million out of bed....:beer:
8. Celebrity. A definite "Newbie" - but look how many multi-million pound careers are being forged by talent show contestant's, reality TV boys and girls, and former glamour models!

Any more for any more??

Of course, this is based entirely on the popular media spin assumption that money equals social status. Simplistic yes but at least it gets the ball rolling....

Regards

D_S

Its simplistic to see 'money making ability' as a driver of social mobility. The drug dealer gangsters I supervise on probation make amazing amounts of money but they don't give a fig about the society they live in....much like the bankers...come to think of it.

Devon_Sailor

Moby,

Indeed - which is more or less what I added as a disclaimer at the end. I doubt many footballers think too much about road potholes and other local issues either

However, with this new "7 Classes of Britain" thing the BBC is plastering all over the place, I thought it might be interesting to see what vehicles there are (or which have disappeared...) to assist aspirational people.

Drug dealing is certainly not one I would recommend....!

Oh well - thanks for the kindly reply. Seems I may need to come up with a more sensationalist title to attract more comments/debate.

D_S

michaels

So has the removal of most grammar schools removed the route for those with poor parents but intelligence to become doctors and lawyers?

I am not saying Grammar schools were a good thing nor that the system would work any more with middle class parents gaming the system where they do still exist with intensive tutoring but nonetheless they probably previously provided a route that no longer exists.

And I think it is an interesting thread topic and probably better for not having attracted the politico hack slanging match. However social mobility and class are so difficult in this country with everyone thinking they mean different things I suspect income percentiles or asset values are the only way to 'score' this now.

Norma_Desmond

It used to be the case that any sort of social 'mobility' was pretty uncommon; if you were a working class lad and did 'get on' then it would be a few generations at least before your family could even come within a sniff of becoming considered upper middle class.

Now it's instant, and as you say, fuelled by the media obsession with money equalling social status.

Rightly or wrongly, historically our position in society has always been defined by parentage, upbringing, education, manners and taste.

It would be interesting to find out when it all began to change......'60's, '70's?

Devon_Sailor

Michael,

I agree. Perhaps, one could come the to unfashionable and (possibly?) controversial view that as the only simple way to put down definitive markers IS income/asset wealth bands, that Class, by social status, is now defunct. (John Major would be so proud - have we reached his Classless Society nirvana?)

Is "Class" in it's old traditional sense merely being clung to by political dinosaurs of all spectrums as a lazy way of trying to delineate a much more complex social make-up in the C21st? There are very many not well-off Lords and Ladies. There are even more who do not own a vast stately pile, and potter around leading normal indistinct lives. Similarly, whenever polls have been conducted, most people see themselves as working-class; even those who are lawyers, doctors, businessmen or graduates - which traditionally automatically made you middle class, whether you like the moniker or not! :rotfl: Did the usurpation of the "Upper Class" by the "Political Class" as the ruling elite actually mark the death-knell for the old 3-tier model?

Going back to your point, I certainly think that there seems to have been a sea-change in how people approach things. In days gone by (and in many nations across the world) education, be it Grammar schooling, OU courses or night school, was deemed the best way of getting on and up in the world; nowadays it seems that youngsters see only the quick instant fix that overnight stardom on the X-Factor can bring.

So, what other (legal!) ways are there of moving up? Has anyone got any experience of modern apprenticeships (not of the Alan Sugar variety! ) These used to be massively influential - learn a trade, be employed for a few years to master your skills and then branch out on your own, and restart the job-creation/knowledge exchange process.....they seem to keep getting knocked by modern politicians, but with no personal experience I would be interested to learn how they are currently perceived?

Regards

D_S

Devon_Sailor

Norma_Desmond wrote: »

Rightly or wrongly, historically our position in society has always been defined by parentage, upbringing, education, manners and taste.

Norma,

A very valid point and one worth expanding on. It would be very interesting to fast forward 20-30 years, and see how the modern day rich elite are perceived in a generations time.

Whilst the Beckham children are possibly an extreme case (their parents are in their own little celebrity Royalty world...) it would be interesting to see if the phrase "oh, Daddy made a mint playing for Chelsea in the Noughties" opens as many doors as the old "Daddy was a QC/Ambassador/Chairman of the Board" in 2040.

Do you think we will have a new rash of "new" money trying to marry into "old" as happened in the mid C19th and early C20th??

To be honest, what worries me (or infuriates, depends on the weather!) is the new breed of super rich offspring who seem to be getting even richer just because they are rich already? Paris Hilton? The Ecclestones? At least under the old system there was an assumption that at some point you would have to do something....forces/farm/follow Daddy onto the Board. Now, you just have to go to swanky bars and occasionally get your face in the paper for buying multi million pound houses as a birthday treat to yourself?!

How long before the "brashness" of their wealth becomes assimilated into respectability?

D_S

Norma_Desmond

QUOTE

How long before the "brashness" of their wealth becomes assimilated into respectability?

D_S[/QUOTE]

I think, sadly, it has already.

the_flying_pig

michaels wrote: »

So has the removal of most grammar schools removed the route for those with poor parents but intelligence to become doctors and lawyers?..

no. social mobility is the same as, or worse than, average in those few areas that still have grammar schools, such as Kent.

michaels

the_flying_pig wrote: »

no. social mobility is the same or worse than average in those few areas that still have grammar schools, such as Kent.

I am probably naive to think it used to be different but in my imagination in the 50s/60s the 11+ really did just split the bright and hard-working from the rest whereas in the remaining grammar school areas nowadays, as I put in my post, those whose parents know how to work the system will get the places and these parents will almost certainly be those who already have a higher position in the society/income spectrum.

the_flying_pig

michaels wrote: »

I am probably naive to think it used to be different but in my imagination in the 50s/60s the 11+ really did just split the bright and hard-working from the rest whereas in the remaining grammar school areas nowadays, as I put in my post, those whose parents know how to work the system will get the places and these parents will almost certainly be those who already have a higher position in the society/income spectrum.

yeah, i dunno, i mean, it's one of the daft fallacies that annoys me the most, people extrapolating wildly from their own personal experience which is probably in no way representative of the wider world, but here's mine:

my dad is [imo] an outstandingly clever man [i would guess top 0.5% of the population] , born into a lower working class family [son of a well-meaning but uneducated and ignorant farm laborer] in the early 1950s. aged 10 or so, realizing that he was a clever child, he asked his parents to be allowed to take the 11+ exam. they rolled around laughing - they already had three children who managed perfectly well at the local secondary modern school, what could any son of theirs possibly want hanging out with the 'grammar school snobs'? so that was that - a shortcut to leaving school at 14 with no qualifications, and slipped into a lifetime of unskilled work [having children fairly young] before he knew it.

i'm very good academically but not, i wouldn't say, quite on a par with my dad... he just seems to have a little edge in certain things, feats of memory, the ability to add up numbers really quickly, to pick out a word or phrase that he's looking for on a page. in short his potential was likely better than mine, given access to the same opportunity.

but the key difference between the two of us was that i was educated in the 80s/90s rather than the 50s/60s.

so, relatively poor though i was [e.g. on free school meals some of the time] i attended a big comprehensive that had a huge range of abilities in it and pupils from all social classes. i sat my exams [GCSEs & A levels], getting an A in everything of any note that i ever sat, and years later am typing this in the £1m+ house that i own, my household income well into six figures annually. i am not at all sure that any of this would be true if i'd grown up poor in the 50s/60s system.

just my experiences, obviously.