Mike,
The 20- and 80-classes is a description IMO of what goes on here (and
in France and Germany -- and what seems to me to be fairly rapidly
developing in America). It's a rough and ready description but it
serves my purpose because modern terms such as "elite" (sometimes
"beautiful people") and "middle class" which used to be,
respectively, "middle class" and "working class" are confusing
(particularly when cross-referencing between the UK, France and
Germany with America). The term "working class" is never used over
here in normal parlance, and hasn't been for about 10 years. As far
as my observations and reading of history are concerned, the cultural
cleavage between what I presently call the 20- and 80-classes fairly
hits you (that is, me) between the eyes (that is, English eyes).
Keith
At 18:44 24/05/2012, you wrote:
Keith,
While your 80/20 thingee may have some descriptive relevance (I'm
not even sure there but that is an argument for another time) I'm
quite sure it has no analytic or explanatory relevance at all so
your comments below are I think quite misleading. The issue in the
UK (perhaps more than elsewhere) is one of "social class" and how
that has persisted and been filtered and sliced and diced over
time. The persistence of "class" as a useful analytic category in
traditional working class areas (where the "class" has persisted
long after the work has disappeared), in accents and styles (which
seem to persist and move into prominence depending on the ebb and
flow of the economy and of ruling class twittery particularly in the
Conservative Party); the persistence in the role of class as a
determiner of educational performance at the level of the family,
the school and the neighborhood (into which immigrant populations
have been assimilated in an interestingly different fashion from the
experience of immigrants into the other English speaking democracies
and so on and so on gives rather more useful content to a discussion
of the data presented in the Guardian article.
It has been a long time since I looked at that stuff directly but
everything I read indicates that a simple ins/outs; 20/80s; or
whatever doesn't really account for very much in the current
experience of the UK.
M
-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2012 12:33 AM
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION; michael gurstein
Subject: Re: [Futurework] FW: [NetBehaviour] Social mobility: the
charts that shame Britain
At 13:13 23/05/2012, Mike wrote:
Subject: [NetBehaviour] Social mobility: the charts that shame Britain
Can you go from stacking shelves to heading up a major corporation in
Britain? The data suggests it's unlikely.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/may/22/social-mobility-data-cha
rts#zoomed-picture
I suppose we ought to feel shame over here. We have crocodile tears
from the leaders of the Lib-Dems (just as we do from the Tories)
from time to time. But as they have always been (and still are)
predominantly products of the privately-educated 20-class their
anguish soon subsides. As for the Labour Party, we can't hope for
any worthwhile reform from them. On the one hand, they daren't
encourage quality competition from a much wider swathe of private
schools because they're strapped by the state teachers' unions; on
the other hand, the leaders make sure that their own children go to
private schools (or to one of a handful of exceptional state
schools, usually in London) and when they retire from politics, make
sure they make enough money to securely implant their descendants
within the 20-class fold.
However, despite those comments I'm optimistic about social mobility
in future decades within the UK (or any country that wishes to be
economically viable). The increasing need for specialization and
high talent in future years means that the 20-class will longer be
quite so self-selective in education and parentage as it has been
for the past 150 years or so, but will have to expand opportunities
to children of the 80-class more than somewhat and also to try and
reach down to earlier ages before too much mental blunting has been
done by lack of adequate nursery socialization and education. At
present, this leaves most "ordinary" 80-class children at the time
of puberty at least four or five years behind 20-class children.
From puberty onwards, any deficiencies in high skills not learned
by then can seldom be remedied.
As the 80-class continues to decline in numbers due to insufficient
family size, then I think we'll see social mobility growing hugely
within the remaining 20-class.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
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