Climbing the social ladder...

‘Why I believe in teaching middle-class values’

Article from The Independent by Sean O'Grady dated Wednesday 5^th March 2014

                                

(Sean O'Grady is deputy managing editor of The Independent and a former economics editor and leader writer for the title).

Schools should train working-class kids to be more middle class. That’s what happened to me. Learning to ‘act posh’ has its place in tackling social inequality.

I think I may be the sort of person who Peter Brant, head of policy at the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, had in mind when he said that working-class children should be taught to think and act like the middle classes - ‘act posh’ - if they want to get on in life. In particular, Mr Brant warned, poorer pupils are less likely to apply to top universities for fear of ‘not fitting in’.

Well, there’s a surprise… Of course they are terrified of social isolation. I know, because I was too. Yes, I was that working-class child, back in the 1970s, at the fag end of the great British state grammar school experiment. When the time came for me to think about university I was fortunate enough to have been schooled at the Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester, that, laughable and pretentious as it may seem, sought to ape the public schools in every aspect. Apart from the fees bit, obviously.

The school spent the best part of eight years getting me to ‘act posh’. They failed, as anyone who knows me can see, but I, and the few other working-class kids who passed the 11-plus, could manage a reasonable version of the manners of the middle classes. The masters all wore gowns, we stood up when they entered the classroom, they were called ‘Sir’, and we were frit (as we said round our way) of them (i.e. afraid of them).

We also had a uniform, strictly enforced, a house system, and a formal hall, where tables were chaired by one of the prefects, and we were taught proper manners and conversation for communal meals, a sort of junior dinner party training. There were plenty of societies where you could learn middle-class stuff such as chess and debating. Football, regarded as common, was only played informally, during the breaks; rugger (as it was referred to, i.e. rugby) and cricket were the school sports.

The school was rightly proud of its record in sending its boys to Oxbridge (Oxford University or Cambridge University). All paid by the taxpayer. Money well spent I say. So all this gave me some confidence when it came to thinking about going off to Oxford, which I was encouraged to do. I needed it, even after all that grooming; the class thing was still putting me off.

At that time, The Sunday Times ran a series about all the ‘Hooray Henrys’ who supposedly populated the university. There were big pictures of toffs (posh people) in dinner suits and ball gowns chucking champagne around, something I had never encountered in my entire life to that point. These were people who, and I can recall the phrase distinctly, got ‘hog whimperingly’ drunk, and were clearly dead rich. God, they had cars.

It was clear that the likes of me were not going to find it easy to keep up with these types. Socially, at any rate, I was going to be pitifully out of my depth.

Still, I persevered, and when I arrived at my strange medieval little college I was dismayed by the lack of hog whimpering, and somewhat disappointed by the feeble brainpower of some of the products of our great public schools. Instead, I found lots of ex-grammar school boys and girls who were just as surprised as I was that they had got this far. Like them, I was also able to tell my soup spoon from my dessert spoon, and go for the right knife at the right time, and avoid embarrassing myself at formal dinner.

Nowadays, I don’t care much about such things, I’m that middle class. I know what I need to do to fit in. Social mobility¹ is a wonderful thing, but, without a school that can help you learn such subtle aspects of proper behaviour, it doesn’t come easy.

¹Social mobility is a person’s ability to advance their place in society through income, status or education.