I get the distinct impression that it’s not good to be middle class. I’m pretty sure that I am middle class and so from what I read and what I hear I’m not a good person. I am variously a fat cat, an exploiter, I pay too little tax, I’m inclined to vote conservative, I don't want my children go to schools where they might mix with the wrong kind, poor people. foreign people. I think I’m better than other people, I am a snob. Draw breath. I admit that I try to speak so that people will understand what I say, I don’t smoke, I don’t binge drink, I do not have tattoos and neither does my wife, I’m quite fond of going to France, I read quite a bit, listen to a bit of music now and then, have been seen in theatres … Enough! Enough!
I did not start my life as middle class. When I was eleven and my schooling was in the hands of Bishop’s Cleeve Junior School (that’s in Gloucestershire) we kids were getting ready for the exam known as the ‘Scholarship’ – it became known as the Eleven Plus. Succeed and you could go to Cheltenham Boys Grammar School. A whole class of us were in the line-up for the Big Race. Not one of those children came from what could have been called Middle Class families. We were all from families that didn’t have enough money to do much and whatever criteria on which you might have based your judgement you would have known you were looking at working class kids.
I think four of us, maybe five or even six, made it. The others would have gone to secondary modern schools and, no question about it, they would have received a lower grade education and that was not fair. The selection process, given that the grammar school couldn’t have accommodated the entire class, was fair, however; it selected kids who were, at that time, the best in terms of intelligence and education up to that point. It couldn’t have been perfect but at the time it was probably the best system of selection available.
This piece is not about whether it was fair or not. We can return to that another time. My point is that we successful kids, the lucky ones if you like, were all from working class families. We entered the grammar school and we did what society expected us to do – take advantage of what was available, make the most of it. You could say that we tried to do what Society expected of us. We were to play an important part in the country’s future – the War had only ended five years before and that was the way people thought. No-one ever told us that we had to change our culture and reject our backgrounds. Actually, no-one ever mentioned ‘Class’ unless it referred to the one you were in and the one you might go into after the year end.
Let me add something else. It wasn’t that much fun being at a Grammar School. I didn’t go to the Cheltenham one because my parents moved house. I went to Kings Grammar School in Grantham, Carre’s Grammar School in Sleaford and finally, Laxton Grammar School in Oundle. There were all pretty tough, even harsh. It didn't feel privileged to me.
What I and thousands and thousands of other children who went to Grammar Schools became was … wait for it … Educated; and then slowly we became , in the eyes of our society, Middle Class; by virtue of doing what we were told we should do we became, in some eyes, despicable. Oddly we were, and still are, despised not so much by the people who did not get that kind of education but out of some perverse mental gymnastics, by people who did and made a living out of emphasising the divisions between people. I do have in mind some journalists, some politicians and some trade union people. I now find myself privileged although it has never seemed that way to me. I appear to have benefited from an unfair selection system that was geared to favouring the middle class. If I may return to my working class roots for a second, this is absolute bollocks.
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