British elites have been inventive and subtle in preserving their advantages. Their most important achievement has been to tilt Britain towards meritocracy and then restrict access to the means by which citizens can prove their “merit”. Those amongst the rich and connected who fancy themselves as progressives have played into the hands of the most reactionary of their peers. Partly this has been because these so-called progressives are still preoccupied with Marx’s completely outdated idea of what class is. Partly, I think, they know subconsciously that the advent of a real meritocracy would undermine their position of comfort. It’s no accident that the most anti-Semitic people I’ve met in Britain come from the upper classes. They are the ones who have felt most threatened by educationally and economically high-achieving Jews.
One of the cleverest tricks of the British establishment, though, has been to disguise its privilege with the nifty use of vocabulary. I lost count of the number of fellow Oxford undergraduates who cast themselves as “state-educated”, when in fact they had attended fee-charging grammar schools or had government subsidised private education. In the 80s and 90s the word “yuppie” had a completely different meaning in Britain from that used in the States, though in both countries it flagged disapproval. Britain’s yuppies were not “professionals”; the term was most frequently applied to City traders from ordinary backgrounds, the proverbial “barrow-boys made good”. Later the word became further degraded to a tabloid term of abuse for people with more money than the journalist writing about them. Britain’s yuppies were easy to hate: occupationally loud conspicuous consumers. They were an effective distraction, targets the proles could throw rotten fruit at while missing those who lived more secure and quietly enriching lives in the higher branches of the jungle. This idea of inherited security as being the real meaning of class advantage has become almost conventional to those who study social status academically, but has yet to diffuse into everyday discussion. There are still plenty of people who are blind to the real lines in British society.
A few weeks back Hot Wheels Helena was complaining to me about a wussie song that was playing everywhere on the radio: some sensitive singer-songwriter bloke whining about how he’d never get to be with some pretty girl he’d seen. The singer-songwriter is James Blunt and he’s now number one in the UK single charts with the song You’re Beautiful. Various reports are describing Blunt as a “former squaddie“, as though he used to be a working-class grunt with a buzz cut, necking lager in Colchester town centre. Describing someone who used to be an officer in the Household Cavalry (“the Guards”) and who carried the Queen Mother’s coffin as a “former squaddie” is like describing a ex-assistant to the architect Richard Rogers as a “former navvie“.
Once, as I walked into the main entrance of Balliol, a tour guide told the audience following him around Oxford:
“The three most important old-boy networks in Britain are Eton, Balliol, and the Guards.”
So, any visitors to this site thinking of getting a bit bolshie in the comments, just remember who you’re dealing with. I have friends in high places.
Oh that’s so right – a particular source of irritation, still, is that students that have come through the remaining grammar schools are counted (because, in fairness, if they weren’t there would have to be a third category of entrants) in the state school entry statistics for Balliol, Magdalen (of the Laura Spence debacle) and their like.
“There was no escape from the Army. My dad pushed me in that direction and he paid for my university tuition fees so I owed him. But I’ve escaped now.”
Free at last!
Meanwhile, one of the least obvious (but most effective) ways private sector education controls access into Oxbridge is through selection interviews, which give a huge advantage to schools and colleges that can spare the time and resources to produce “well-rounded” applicants (this is a serious business for private schools). These teens have a definite advantage over ones from state schools who are academically able, but “green”, IMO.
I did some Cambridge admissions interviews years ago. Our procedure included this: my colleague had read the candidates’ files – he knew about their schooling and so on – while I was “blind” – no info beyond what we learned in the interview. On every candidate (of 13, if memory serves) we agreed: every one. This is very remarkable. True, I am gifted with rare insight into the human personality, but on the other hand I’m not entirely sure that he was, um, well-balanced. And still we agreed. Make of it what you will.
When I was at City College Norwich, one of the boys in my A Level maths class, Jonathan was told by our teacher that even though he was going to get four A grades in mathematics, higher mathematics, physics and computer science that he need not bother applying to study at Cambridge because of the school he had been to previously, and that he wouldn’t be accepted and it would waste a space on his UCAS form. He was middle class and sounded like he had a plum in his mouth 🙂 On the other hand, Courtney, who had been to the girl’s Cathedral school in Norwich and whose dad is a director at Norwich Union was told that with her two As and a B she could apply anywhere she wanted to study law.
In some ways it’s more like a job interview in a small firm: you’re good, but are you one of us? Are you somebody we can work with?
That’s not to say it’s actually unfair, but it’s a different nuance of meritocracy: we don’t pick you if the best or most deserving of merit, but if you’re the most appropriate or best suited.
I actually heard this sort of thing from a fellow Balliol graduate (called Henry) who used to work in the City, on why he preferred Balliol people: “You want someone you can get on with, so why not choose someone from a similar background? It saves everyone a lot of time and you know the man you choose should be able to do the job well.”
I should also confess that Balliol men were involved in my being chosen for my first three proper jobs—not that many other people were interested in being employed to work as a library assistant or a lab technician. But that’s another story.
Alynzia, that teacher needs shooting – what a turd.
B4L, not in my experience. In Cambridge, and in my much greater experience elsewhere, I looked for bright enthusiasts. I was going to have to teach the buggers and so didn’t give a button for school, accent or any of the rest of that chip-on-the-shoulder stuff. The feature that seemed to me to give people an advantage at interview, apart from being bright, well-informed, keen and so on, were (i) Be capable of speech. Being tremendously fluent might not help you – you might just give away the fact that you are a dolt – but if you can’t bring yourself to speak, it’s awfully hard for an admissions tutor to form an impression in your favour. (ii) Be familiar with the idea of discussing abstractions, or even just be familiar with talking to adults. Mind you, some youngsters can begin to learn that skill before your very eyes, which leaves you wondering what the hell their parents and schoolteachers have been doing for the past umpteen years. Otherwise, most of that I-hate-Oxbridge stuff seems to me to be part of that pathetic class-consciousness that so mars English life.
> that I-hate-Oxbridge stuff seems to me to be part of that pathetic class-consciousness that so mars English life.
That would be fine if people didn’t believe the propaganda about Oxbridge producing the best, the finest minds, the cream of their generation, etc. Private education works by heads convincing fee-paying parents that they can pass their oik of a child from one stage in the process to the next, from one prep school to another, and ultimately (they hope) to Oxbridge. Education has very little to do with it. It’s all about knowing the right techniques: teach to the exams, train the 6th formers up to get through the interview, and then count on awe-struck employers (by no means all) and former chums to ease one’s passage through life. That’s what private education offers and that’s their pitch to parents. Kids from a state background are hindered, not because they’re not “bright” (that word!) but because they have to do things properly and compete entirely on merit, without the careful training and coaching that others get. The difference at age 17/18 can be enormous.
Well that was my experience and that of teachers I know who’ve worked in many different types of school.
The problem in Britain is that most people are only conscious of the most superficial aspects of class.
In this country class determines how long you live, how healthy you are while you’re alive, the quality and duration of your education, who you marry, how interesting your work is, even how likely you are to get proper service in a shop or effective treatment from your doctor.
It’s in the interests of those who benefit from the class system to obscure their own position within it and to oppose any change that would truly undermine it. One tactic is to accuse anyone who objects to the status quo of “having a chip on his shoulder”. Having got into and survived Oxford at least I can slag off the place without having to put up with that other content-free cliché: “That’s just sour grapes”.
“In this country class determines how long you live, how healthy you are while you’re alive, the quality and duration of your education, who you marry, how interesting your work is, even how likely you are to get proper service in a shop or effective treatment from your doctor.” Subject to caveats about exactly what you mean by “determine”, I should think that it’s true for this and any other country too.
“to oppose any change that would truly undermine it”: yeah, but that’s just what the turd schoolteacher was doing – don’t apply because they won’t accept you – bloody pathetic. Foul, stupid, self-congratulatory, smug turd. Christ I hate that stuff.
It depends. Did the schoolteacher tell that sixth-former to apply to Imperial instead? At research level it outclasses Oxford and Cambridge in most of his A-level subjects. I suspect some of its teaching is better too. Doesn’t have quite the same snob value, though.
But, Damian, the point is not specific to Oxbridge, or to Universities at all. It’s the hopeless, defeatist “Don’t try because you might not succeed”, combined with the refusal to analyse and learn from any failure and instead just to blame it on “them”. To return to your example, there is probably somewhere a teacher who says to a youngster considering applying to Imperial “Well, they have almost as high a percentage of students from private schools as Oxbridge has, and anyway the State school pupils they want are from Grammar Schools and Sixth Form Colleges, not bog-standard Comprehensives like this, so there’s no point your applying.” It’s the life-denying, joy-hating, fearful, self-abasing, sodding negativity of it all: drives me up the wall. Tossers!
Aside from being irrelevant to the case described by Alynzia, this is the nub of the problem. If your parents are comfortably well off—or comfortable with the system—then you can afford failure. If not—especially if no one from your family has ever been to university before—then you would be foolish to gamble with your future. Worse, the returns on an Oxbridge education vary sharply with the backgrounds of those who invest in one.
In this particular case the teacher’s advice was (ironically) based on a perception that inverse snobbery is built into the Cambridge selection process: the teacher believed the boy’s accent and previous private school schooling would be terminal. He was probably wrong.
But in the majority of the sorts of cases you are ranting about, less well-off students have to weigh up whether or not to risk a valuable UCAS slot and years of financial sacrifice to apply for a place at a university that is statistically far more likely to turn them down and from which they are more likely to drop out. That’s not “bloody pathetic”; it’s simple economics. In the event of rejection the teacher might “learn” from that failure next time; the student won’t—because (s)he won’t get a next time, because his/her parents can’t afford one.
There is indeed a problem with state school teachers having low expectations, but, for many students in this country, even staying on into sixth form is a huge gamble that their parents are reluctant to make without some guarantee of a decent pay-off. It’s easy to sneer from your side; you try picturing yourself nancying around in sub fusc when you live on a council estate and your parents are pressuring you to make some decent money.
A tiny, tiny fraction of those who don’t apply but should are accounted for by teachers with low expectations; the vast majority avoid applying to “Ivy League” universities for rational reasons—usually because they won’t be able to get the grades studying at the school they’re in, not because they aren’t bright, but because they haven’t been taught or coached by the best.
Apart from anything else, one perfectly sensible reason for comprehensive school kids not to apply to Oxbridge is that many of the ones who do get in have a bloody awful time when they get there and find it harder to get the kind of job they want afterwards because they are considered “overqualified” by stupid people in the real world. Outside the minority of vocational subjects, higher education qualifications have nothing to do with being “qualified”; they are branding and Oxford and Cambridge are designer labels.
Yes, setting over-modest targets for bright kids at bog-standard schools is a crime, but just as bad is 1) assuming that Oxbridge is necessarily the best for them (or even the best for their subject) and 2) forcing them to be cannon-fodder in some ideological crusade. Number two applies to those who think comprehensivisation improves society as well as those who think that being rejected as a teenager by an over-rated mediaeval theme park for the offspring of higher rate taxpayers is somehow character-building.
You are still being far too specific: the example really scarcely matters. My daughter knew a girl in the Brownies who didn’t want to join the Girl Guides because “The badges are too tough.” If you are never prepared to risk failure, how will you ever do anything? If you are not prepared to try, how will you ever learn anything? Hopeless, just hopeless.
Not all comprehensive schools actually prevent you from getting good grades. Just thought I’d point that out. I think that quality of education is probably an urban problem more than simply a comprehensive /private school one. Luckily for me, my comprehensive school actually got better grades for its intake than the local grammar.
Just wanted to stand up for the hard working teachers.