Privilege?

I slipped accidentally onto the Telegraph online yesterday evening and found a headline, not a major headline but one towards the bottom of the page, that informed me that Kate (used to be Middleton) was wearing Lady Diana's pearls. Is that really news? I suppose it's symptomatic of the fact that British society is still oddly class-ridden.

For a while it seemed as if the edges were getting blurred. Working class kids could go to university and get into professions previously closed to them. And, goodness me, a girl from a perfect ordinary family could go to university, marry a prince and find herself with the possibility of becoming queen one day! Fairy tales could come true!

Except, of course, that it was never really the case. Back when I and a whole lot of others of my generation were the first of our families to escape to university and then flew the nest, it was mostly those of us whose parents were already moving up. Most of the manual workers's offspring were destined to follow in their parents' footsteps. And when some of their offspring later did get into those supposedly more vocational university courses, it was only to find themselves saddled with huge debts at the end of it. As for the girl who might be queen, well, her "ordinary" family turned out to be an ordinary very wealthy family. The prince did not after all marry the working girl who had never had any privileges. So it goes.

I keep coming across news items relating to these class-related things. There's the tale of Princess Eugenie's application to read English Literature at Newcastle University. Her application was rejected on the grounds that her predicted grades were not good enough. One explanation is that the person dealing with the form was Italian and did not cotton on to who this potential student was! Fortunately someone realised in time what a privilege it would be to have a princess at their university and so they offered her a place on something like Art History. According to the news item, "the university were “horrified” to find out that she had been rejected and promptly offered her a place for a different degree, according to Dr Martin Farr, a senior history lecturer at Newcastle University". Phew! What a relief!

And then there is this article about how to learn a language: all about someone who was sent off to Russian more or less on her own aged 13. Curious! I read that article and thought to myself that only the wealthy can do stuff like that. Recently we talked with some friends about Gerald Durrell and his stories about growing up on a Greek island. The family often declared themselves poor and yet could manage to go off and live on their island where young Gerald, the baby of the family (el benjamín as the Spanish say) ran wild and free. They lived a hand to mouth existence with constant battles with the bank but nobody ever went truly hungry. They had the connections and the network to make it all work.

Similarly the girl who was sent off to Russia. It takes a certain confidence that comes from being around money to run your life that way.

And then Michele Hanson, whose columns I have enjoyed reading for years and years, wrote something about the disappearance of music teaching from schools. She wrote:

"Remember the lovely old pre-Sats days and all those peripatetic instrumental teachers? I do because I was one. Children would leave their classes – yes, leave their classes – and come and learn the flute, or whatever, for 20 minutes. Free. Instrument loaned by the school. Free. Then any child could play in orchestras, bands and concerts. Happy days. Some still can, but if they do make it, there will be nowhere left for the “low” ones to play. I almost despair of music in this country. Most contemporary classical music has rather gone up its own plinkety-plonky, inaccessible, academic bottom, and last week Andrew Lloyd Webber – lord of wambly, mainly forgettable or baby tunes – has just collected a lifetime achievement award. Is he the best we can do? Surely not. Imagine how many more talented musicians there would be if everyone had a fair chance. Music should be the most, not the least, important subject in schools. I have said it before, I’ll say it again, and again, and again …"

Some might disagree with her assessment of Andrew Lloyd Webber (not necessarily me) but she's not wrong about the music teaching. Pretty soon only the wealthy will learn languages and music!

Not all is negativity, however. During my last couple of years as a sixth form college tutor I had a student in my tutor group who was a year or three older than the rest. Determined and concentrated, she met all her deadlines and worked enough part time hours to pay rent on a tiny flat and support herself. The back story is that she had a pretty dysfunctional family, dropped out of school as soon as she could and lived rough for a while. That could have been the end of her story. Eventually, however, she got back into education, night school classes and the like, acquired the qualifications to get into sixth form and chose to study hard, non-girly subjects: Maths, Physics, Chemistry. And off she went to university, to read Physics, all the while supporting herself, and managing to do charity work in between times. The BSc out of the way, she went on to do a Master's degree, also in Physics, and just recently completed her PhD, still in Physics, with a bit of medical technology thrown in for good measure. A total success story. One of the things she does now is visit schools to tell girls how they too can succeed in science!

I feel quite privileged to have had a small hand in her success, even if it was just writing the reference that accompanied her university application