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it depends on how you grew up, it's self-perpetuating. Take lower/working class. You don't have much money, you live in a crap area of town, you go to a bad school, your parents probably aren't very bright and neither are you. So you the patern continues, you don't have much money because you weren't very bright, went to a bad school and your kids aren't so bright either. To the way of talking comes from learning language from people who aren't clever, and going to a school where no-one expects you to be clever, or can be bothered to encourage intelligence, so you never get clever, and neither do your kids. It's also part of attitude, you recognise the tough position your parents were/are in, and respect their efforts (perhaps) and so don't want to show them up by being 'better'.
Similar with middle class, you live in a nicer area of town, where the nice schools are, your parents are nice enough and are probably of average/high intelligence, and so are you. So the pattern continues, you have an average amount of money because you were intelligent enough to get a goodish job, you're quite clever and so are your kids. You parents want you to do better, and encourage good grades, and your school expects there to be the odd child with a mark of excellence, and encourages them, as they do with your kids.
So now we have money and intelligence (or at least education).
Are there any other defining factors of class?
Oh me.....oh my.........
:eek2:
Culture. If you accept, for example, schooling in the UK, it can possibly be seen as a rejection of your culture. It can be this way for any culture, accepting white western christian education, is the same as accepting white western christian culture.
Hoo boy ....... I can't see where the line came from at all ..... theres some extremely stoopid middle class people, and some very bright working class people
Education does seem to play a crucial role - witness thus several posts which talk about teachers pushing kids to do things they wouldn't have thought of doing otherwise.
Thinking someone is dumb cos they don't know act 3 of Hamlet is a very big mistake IMHO.
It depends which side of the family I look at. My mum's family are upper-middle, without a doubt, but my dad's family are working class. However, both of my parents are oxford graduates, and I'm nothing but middle class. The odd thing is, my own sister's children, because of where they go to school, and where my sister lives, are nearly working class. (eta:) Despite my sister's own oxford degree.
From a person with a middle class background?
What on earth were you thinking of, you silly person?
:eek:
Yes.
No.
Next?
sorry for the delay in the incisive answer to this stupid question, but I've been in Barcelona.
And it will get smaller and smaller as more people go to uni.
My family are the archetypal working class, but I'm a Durham graduate, so I aren't.
If it's the former, then you're working class.
It's defined by your relationship to the means of production.
Obviously there are cultural influences, but it depends on what you mean by "class". In a purely economic sense, it is defined by our economic relationship to production.
Using that definition, I'm definitely working class. Yup.
It all depends on the definition.
Professionals are seen as middle class, yet teachers don't work for themselves.
Plumbers and car mechanics do work for themselves, but couldn't often be classed as middle class.
Class is anachronistic anyway. Either you have dough or you don't.
i don't believe inteligence to be inherited.
my step daughter and her husband have produced the most inteligent toddler i ever met!
but ...we so obviously inherit a lot of charctaristics ..geneticly ...i'm convinced we also inherit genetic memory to a certain degree as well.
It's a useful tool for looking at the relationship between labour, capital and power.
Lets see who really is the more intelligent between myself and yourself Fiend.
Who the fuck are you trying to patronise here...what's your problem?
Shall we begin?
This truly is fascinating material!
Do carry on
...and who told you that morrocan
whoa Im with eternalsunshine on this one.
Ive been there, done that and got the t-shirt, I never had money but came from a decent part of town thank you. Im not bright, but im not stoopid and take offence at what you have written.
For example, my grandparents did physical, practical or routined labour for others (diamond-carver, and seamstresses, while one grandfather was a colonel in the army) and having no education (not sure about my army-grandfather to be honest). They were all working class.
Both my parents have university degrees from international-known universities in their fields and are middle-class due to their kind of labour.
That said my working-class grandmother was much more refined than people of a higher rank than her. She read Tolstoy and other great authors. In Danish! After having moved here at the age of 50 or so.
Now, Tolstoy is a rareity among usual Danes. But to have an immigrant read it. And then in Danish, breaks all stigmas.
personaly i see you as a chimp ...
What class are chimps?
They should have done the poll here .....
here the working class has disappeared.
I agree that class relates to the value society places on your job/role.
But it's more than economics, it is a state of mind too. People calling themselves working class may earn much more than someone who considers themself middle class (e.g. plumber vs teacher).
I think people can change class too. Kermit's point was that by going to university a person alters their opportunities to get a middle class career, and so they change class in that way.