The Boy on Top
Well...you've made good. Something to be very proud of...and something for your kids to aspire to.
I don't think I was clear (I'm a bit jetlagged, I'm in China this week). This wasn't a guilt thing, it was sort of a combination of wonder at being in this room of successful people, and then wonder at if its a good thing for a room to be full of that sort of people socialising. When does class perpetuate itself innappropriately? Our children have no right to be in that room when they are our age, but will their being "schooled" that way make it more likely? Don't know the answers, but the questions are bopping around in my mind. TB
Class can only be a bad thing if people do not live by the following rule from Luke: To whom much is given, much is expected. Cheers!!
Nice one, and very true. Thanks for the reminder. TB
No I didn't get a sense of guilt at all and my comment incorrectly conveyed that sentiment.
I did get your sense of wonderment and I think my response was simply that you deserve to be moving in slightly more rarified air because of your own achievements...and really you do have a lot to be proud of.
I think that yes, it's far more likely that your kids will grow up and move in those circles, simply because of what you have achieved and the network you have built up. So yes, class will perpetuate, in the same way that the vast majority of kids who grow up on a rough council estate will also continue to move in that strata of society.
But just as a child from that background can work and create luck and have success and move into a higher level, so can your children bring themselves down and be rejected by the current class system you live in.
It's all up to the individual, and what they make of their lives.
But anyway, being accepted as part of a slightly more elite group has no bearing on your worth as a person, and I know that you know this.
Good, that comment didn't sound like you.
I hear you, and though I know the truth in what you say, my egalitarian upbringing makes me want different and more. The children in the council estate deserve the same chances. I believe in my children enough that I know they'd do well, but being a parent means giving them the absolute best shot is inbuilt. So I do. Something about it though still just doesn't feel quite right, not quite fair. TB
My first two children went to private schools, because that was what was usual in our families. But I didn't like the way it all seemed to be becoming more socially divisive, and we sent our third child to state schools, in part because we didn't like that association.
My friends range from council house dwellers to landed gentry to self-made successes at various levels, to those who haven't a penny and I quite often don't know whether they have or not and don't think it matters. I know you wouldn't care either, but I have a worried feeling that too many of the people you spent your evening with would judge me by my income. It really does concern me that the feeling of equality that was on the increase is diminishing again and that the social divide is getting wider.
You know I don't disagree, and its part of why I did that post. Socially LL and I mix like you do, with a pretty wide range of friends. Yet that divide, which for a long time was becoming looser, has firmed up. I don't think this "class" judges on income, but by the same token, mostly through where they put their children, they socialise differently. That is the worry. TB
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