Explain why classless britain is a myth

In general, however, the series has lacked any truly astonishing rags-to-riches tales. The children from Michael Apted's 7 Up. Lynn can be seen with the long hair in the middle of the picture; Nick is to the far right Credit: BBC. Even so, there had been a steady average rise in the population after World War Two, with each child expecting to be slightly better off than their parents. Unfortunately, the relative proportions of people moving up or down a class now seems to be reversing.

The trouble is, the fabric of our society has so many strands, it can be difficult to disentangle all the potential factors that could influence your status. One potential issue is that most previous studies have only examined two generations — parents and children — whereas your class may depend on many more branches of the family tree.

Tak Wing Chan at University College London, for instance, has found that a child is two-and-a-half times as likely to have a professional or managerial job, if their grandparents were of a higher class. Does the British class system have a built-in inertia?

With these more distant ties, social class may be even less elastic than we thought — even if one generation pulls away, the next may be tugged backwards thanks to the broader connections of their family at large.

In the Domesday Book of , for instance, you can find the names of wealthy landlords, who were most often descended from the Norman invaders, such as Baskerville, Darcy, Mandeville, Montgomery, Neville, Percy, Punchard, and Talbo. He then examined how often such names continued to crop up in historical records during the following centuries. He scoured lists of people attending Oxford and Cambridge Universities, probate records of inheritance, and members of parliament, for instance, all of which might suggest a higher social status.

If social mobility were high, you would expect those rare names to crop up less and less often, as people of other backgrounds begin to occupy those prestigious positions; if it were low, the proportion would stay roughly the same. In fact, he found long-term social mobility to be very slow indeed , calculating that it takes around 10 generations for someone at the highest or lowest levels of society to reach the middle classes.

If anyone doubts this statement, let him examine the social situation of many small communities in different parts of this country during the early stages of their development.

Continuous perpetuation from generation to generation of even small differences, however, soon produces class consciousness. Extremes of wealth or poverty accelerate the process.

It is not within my province to consider what political measures should be taken if we reject the idea of an inevitable stratification of society.

It is not for me to say what legislation is in order if we desire to implement the ideal of a free classless society. My unwillingness to discuss this important aspect of the problem is not to be taken as a measure of my dissatisfaction with the rapidly growing social and economic differentiation of the United States. On the contrary, if the American ideal is not to be an illusion, the citizens of this republic must not shrink from drastic action.

The requirement, however, is not a radical equalization of wealth at any given moment; it is rather a continuous process by which power and privilege may be automatically redistributed at the end of each generation.

The aim is a more equitable distribution of opportunity for all the children of the land. The reality of our national life must be made a sufficiently close approximation to our ideal to vitalize a belief in the possibility of the envisaged goal.

I am wary of definitions—even in expounding the exact sciences to an elementary class. It is often more profitable to explain the nature of a concept by illustration than to attempt a definition. Both the words 'free' and 'classless,' as I am employing them, have a relative, not an absolute, meaning. They are useful, I believe, even in a rough quantitative sense, in contrasting different types of social organizations which have existed in the last few centuries in the Western World.

It is easy to imagine a small segment of any country where one would be hard put to it to say whether the society in question was free and classless, or the contrary.

To pass a judgment on larger social units is even more difficult, but I should not hesitate to say that Russia today is classless, but not free; England, free, but not classless; Germany neither free nor classless.

To contrast the social history of the United States and that of even so closely related a country as Great Britain is illuminating. If we examine, for example, the recent history by G. Cole entitled The British Common People, , we shall see portrayed the evolution of one type of political democracy within a highly stratified caste system.

Compare this picture with the history of the growth of this republic by expansion through the frontier in the last one hundred years—a history in which social castes can be ignored; a history where, by and large, opportunity awaited the able and daring youths of each new generation. This fundamental difference between the United States and England has been blurred by similarities in our political and legal systems and by our common literary culture.

Failure to give due weight to the differences between a casteless society and a stratified society has had unfortunate consequences for our thinking. I have already suggested that many of our friends on the Right have had their educational views distorted by too ardent contemplation of the English public schools so-called and English universities. Similarly, I believe that in the last few decades our friends on the left, who look towards a collectivist society, have suffered from overexposure to British views—views emanating in this case not from the ruling class but from the left-wing intellectuals of the Labor party.

It seems to me that in this century, as in a much earlier period of our history, an imported social philosophy has strongly influenced radical thought. I am not referring to orthodox Marxism, but rather to the general slant of mind inevitable among English and Continental reformers whose basis of reference is a society organized on hard-and-fast class lines.

The original American radical tradition has been given a twist by the impact of these alien ideas. As far as the role of government is concerned, the political reformer has swung completely round the circle.

On this issue, Jefferson with his almost anarchistic views would find difficulty, indeed, in comprehending his modern political heirs. Native American radicalism has all but disappeared.

Our young people now seem forced to choose between potential Bourbons and latent Bolsheviks. But without a restoration of the earlier type of radical the Jeffersonian tradition in education will soon die. Obviously it cannot long survive a victory of the socialistic Left—there is no place for such ideas in a classless society on the Russian model.

And it will likewise disappear automatically unless a high degree of social mobility is once again restored. To keep society fluid, the honest and sincere radical is an all-important element. Those in positions of power and privilege including college presidents need to be under constant vigilant scrutiny and from time to time must be the objects of attack.

Tyrannies of ownership and management spring up all too readily. In order to ensure that the malignant growths of the body politic will be destroyed by radiations from the Left, much abuse of healthy and sound tissue must be endured. Reformers and even fanatical radicals we must have.

But if the unique type of American society is to continue, those who would better conditions must look in the direction of the progressive or liberal movements of an earlier period. The Left must consider returning to the aim of checking tyranny and restoring social mobility. Reformers must examine every action lest they end by placing in power the greatest tyrant of all—organized society.

There are probably some who feel that I am indulging in nostalgic fancy when I hope for the evolution of a less stratified and more fluid society. You may say that the modern world of large cities, vast industries, and scientific methods of communication has made the America of a hundred years ago as irrelevant as the Middle Ages.

You may argue that a way of life which was possible in the s is impossible in the s; that in the near future we shall all of us have to move in a quite contrary direction.

You may contend that soon we shall have to take sides in a bitter class struggle and choose between an American brand of Fascism and an American brand of Socialism. I know that many believe this to be inevitable. I venture to disagree. And here is the reason for my rash dissent.

In my opinion, our newly erected system of public education has potentialities of which we little dream. In this century we have erected a new type of social instrument.

Our secondary-school system is a vast engine which we are only beginning to understand. We are learning only slowly how to operate it for the public good. But I have hope that it will aid us in recapturing social flexibility, in regaining that great gift to each succeeding generation—opportunity, a gift that once was the promise of the frontier. Let me explain. Today some six million boys and girls attend our secondary schools, ten times the number enrolled a half century ago.

Today nearly three quarters of those of high-school age are enrolled as pupils; fifty years ago schooling at this level was a privilege of less than ten per cent of those who might attend. Opportunity can be evaluated only in terms of personal capacity. What is opportunity for one young man is a blind alley for another. In rapidly expanding pioneer communities, openings for capabilities of all sorts automatically appeared.

Only doctors, lawyers, and ministers needed an extensive education. Opportunities were ready at hand for all other types of talent.

In our highly industrialized, relatively static society, the situation is otherwise. The personal problem of each boy or girl is much more difficult.

Abilities must be assessed, talents must be developed, ambitions guided. This is the task for our public schools. All the future citizens pass through these institutions.

They must be educated as members of a political democracy, but, more important still, they must be equipped to step on to the first rung of whatever ladder of opportunity seems most appropriate. And an appropriate ladder must be found for each one of a diverse groups of students. This may seem an overwhelming burden to put upon our educational system. But is it not possible that our public schools, particularly our high schools, can be reconstructed for this specific purpose?

Jefferson thought of universal schooling of younger children chiefly in terms of educating potential voters. His selective process for higher studies was conceived in terms of intellectual pursuits—of preparation for the learned professions such as law and medicine. To continue the tradition he started, we must expand both of his ideas today.

The roads which lead to those careers which depend on aptitude for 'book learning' still run through the universities. We must fight to keep them open.

State-supported universities have blazed the way. But the task is far from done. In many localities the opportunities for the children of the really poor are lamentable indeed. Outside of metropolitan areas and college towns, the privileges of a professional training are hard to win. An expanded scholarship policy in our privately endowed universities is imperative.

Wisely administered student aid will go far to right the balance. Perhaps this device merits more attention even by institutions supported by the state. The changes required to provide adequately for the intellectually gifted are relatively slight. The real problems of reconstruction of our schools and colleges do not lie in this area. The real difficulties are with the careers of a different sort.

Our schools must be concerned not only with the able scholar, but with the artist and the craftsman. They must nourish those whose eye or ear or manual dexterity is their greatest asset.

They must educate others whose gifts lie in an ability to understand and lead their fellow men. The school curricula must include programs for developing the capacities of many who possess intuitive judgment on practical affairs but have little or no aptitude for learning through the printed page. It has been a natural consequence of our history that many false values now permeate the entire educational system. On the other hand, the same ability often suffers from lack of stimulation when there is failure to maintain high standards.

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