I’ve often heard my brothers and sisters of the Great White North patting themselves on the back for our lack of class system. Unlike other countries where class divides are marked.
I always did wonder if we had no class system why we had so many classes. Working class, middle class, lower middle class, upper middle class, blue collar, white collar–I used to ask what very poor was, dirty collar?
There is without a doubt a very strong class system here and the idea that class lines are easily crossed is naive.
A child from a poor or working class home is unlikely to have the same opportunities for post secondary education as a child from a middle class home. This starts right from public school.
A child who speaks out, grabs toys, and is bossy with playmates receives very different attention depending on the income of the parents concerned. One child will be seen as a leader, confident, assertive, the other as aggressive, lacking self discipline and a future behaviour problem.
Interviews will be scheduled and the parents advised to seek help now while s/he is young enough to “retrain” and parenting classes will be suggested.
Even if s/he is gifted s/he will be treated differently. There will be no extra supports or encouragement merely a derisive attitude that you would even consider that your child could somehow be smarter than his/her monied counterparts.
This attitude pounded grade after grade into a childs mind ensures they will have little belief in their abilities. The cycle of poverty is not created by the poor it is forced upon them.
Are there examples of people having lifted out regardless? Of course there are. That doesn’t disprove the reality of most.
Think of the subtle distinctions that are made daily. If you meet two people one in a suit one in shabby casual dress who would you assume is more educate?, monied? perhaps you may even make a judgement on their intelligence.
In situations like the recent school shooting many are of the opinion the parents aren’t doing the right things. These are the moral judgements of the middle class on the lower classes. Who are perceived not to be spending enough time with their children or getting the right care or enrolling them in the right courses.
No thought given to the money that would entail, to the necessity to work long hours and often two jobs. To all the other insults that poverty provides. No thought because there is no understanding or empathy. Two worlds, light years apart.
Class divisions exist and are deepening. Basic necessities of life are becoming harder and harder to get.
Children are growing up feeling helpless about their future. They feel the sting of class division at school when they can’t afford the right clothes, or toys. When parents don’t allow children to play together because they don’t live in the right neighbourhoods. When Johnny gets all the prizes in school fund raising because his mom and dad can always raise alot of money.
Conservative politicians have been and continue to cultivate and explore that fear of the lower classes and find it useful to divert attention away from issues which will eventually affect everyone.
As progressive Canadians we should show some class and work toward a society where there is none.
April Reign, in Ontario the class divide is also apparent in who takes courses that require additional supplies in secondary school (eg. art class), plays sports (sport fees), intramural sports and after school activities (activity fees), and ths includes school dances, prom as it is a part of the activity fees.
Also, kids go on wonderful school trips about the cost per student is usually pretty expensive.
Years ago I returned to school to finish my degree and get a masters, my oldest child decided not to take art history in the 2nd year (didn’t tell me) because there was a school trip for the class to go to Italy and she knew I couldn’t afford to help her with expenses (she was working pt-time) as it cost about 2000.00. She never said anything and so I was unaware, and the art teacher never asked why she didn’t take art history although she was a wonderful artist and had taken the prerequisite course the year before.
So kids don’t say anything. And additional school fees are getting worse, hence, we will see more divide between the have and have-nots. I really wasn’t a have-not than, just ‘broke’, but we experienced what it is like to make hard choices. And I don’t think that it was a hard choice, in comparison to what alot of people have to do.
Great post. I’ve also noticed that kids get a ton of homework these days and wonder what happens to those who don’t have parents available to help because they are working.
I think that in many ways the poor are essentially patrolled by the middle-class in various institutions of education and social services. The middle-class have a vested interest in maintaing these relations – conscious or not – and often reinforce and re-create the cycle of poverty as you have pointed out, AR.
Well, the worst part about it is that your not really ever going to get a good discussion about class politics on here because the vast majority of the people who live at the brunt end of class politics will never have the time and access to discuss such things. I’m a firm believer in the idea that Canada has a very large chunk of disenfranchised citizens who we (the chattering class) know next to nothing about aside from the fact that we can see them when we go to the store and buy our stuff, have our food served to us and such.
I mean, imagine what our perception of class politics would be like if we could actually open up the discussion to the people who see the worst of it… I tend to think that’s why conservatives are always trying to work the people below them more and more… So that they won’t have even time to contemplate how they’re being screwed.
Don’t forget pink collar.
And of course, class is deeply intertwined with race and gender.
Joshua I’ve taken awhile to respond to your post because I’ve been afraid of the reaction. Nevertheless, as a good friend reminded me, it is my truth to tell.
I am not of the “chattering classes”.
My father died when I was quite young. My mother was left no insurance and she coped on her own. We were never well off, and sometimes went days on toast and tea.
I was not encouraged, though tested as extremely gifted, to even consider post secondary education. It was not my mom who did that but the teachers.
I dropped out of school in grade 10, though I did go back to finish when I was older.
All my education comes from reading. Finding articles, books, people with knowledge and listening to them.
In my married life we started out doing fairly well. But then his job became redundant. We started struggling and have been ever since. We, even when both of us were working, have never again achieved that wage level.
I have watched people carelessly buying food and pushing it aside, knowing that I had to come up with supper for the kids out of the few dented cans of crap from the food bank.
I have cried at night because I know how badly my kids want something or other that many of their peers have multiples of and knowing that I can’t get it for them.
The internet is a huge luxury for us. But the one thing I can give my kids is knowledge. And though they sometimes choose to play games just as often they are on to learn something.
It was my child who was tagged as a behaviour problem because also gifted he finished his work well in advance of everyone else and often answered questions better than the teacher.
If you want a discussion of what it’s like to be poor and marginalized. To fear that any illness may mean you lose your home. To be embarrassed of your circumstances, to fear that your words won’t carry any weight—you’re in the right place.
I think you’re telling us, April, that you didn’t make this up. Yes?
We’re talking about human reality here; we’re far beyond academic theory.
The expression “the chattering classes” was invented to shame and silence those people who did get the edumacation but who never forgot where they came from. People like me, eg, and many others here, I suspect. Leave that cheap label to the right-wingers. Speak to the truth you live and the truth you know that others are living. Speak truth to power, and you can’t go wrong, whatever labels they throw at you.
Thank you April. It’s interesting that it was difficult for you to post that person information, but it is so important to disrupt the assumptions that the mainstream makes (bloggers have money and too much time on their hands, for example!).
The internet is actually pretty accessible for the poor in Canada nowadays, and very accessible for the struggling lower-middle classes. If you have kids it’s almost a necessity. Schools expect kids to have computers.
Also, many people go in and out of poverty – I don’t have the stats handy but I think it is something like a half of us will experience at least few years of poverty in our lifetimes. Many, many bloggers are poor – writing is actually a form of empowerment, a way of taking power, of having a voice, however small and insignificant. I used to be very poor, even homeless. For about two years, I’ve been comfortably middle class, but now I’m going back to school. Where will that take me? I know it sounds trite, but the personal really is the political. Many of us know what it’s like to be disenfranchised and struggling, and our politics comes from our experiences, and from our hearts.
Hi, April. As I see it there is a big difference between general poverty and a “class system”, like you see in the UK (where I live now). This country’s class system is what I would call “fixed”. The rich and poor are distinguishable from one another the instant they open their mouths, so mobility between classes is rare and difficult. The closest thing I have seen in Canada would be the difference between the standards of living for First Nations and the rest of us. Lucky and unlucky have no meaning over here – you’re born into your class and are likely to stay there forever, and your children, and your children’s children. Whereas I honestly believe that in Canada things can get turned around, as they have for many of my friends (and myself) who used to live in poverty. (Actually, I’m not well off now either – we can’t afford to start a family, and the only reason we live relatively comfortably is that there are only two of us, both working full time).
Anyway, this isn’t meant to be a “let Canada off the hook because the UK is worse” reply – Canada doesn’t do nearly enough to alleviate poverty, and there is absolutely no excuse for homelessness, or for the way you or your son were treated at school. I suppose I just think it’s important to differentiate between “income disparity”, “poverty” and “social class”, as they are very different evils.
@Alceste –
What is it like over there now as far as the monied classes and social responsibility?
My mom (who came from Scotland) used to say you could always tell new and old money because new money saw poverty as a moral issue and old money was more likely to treat you as a human being and be forefront in charity efforts.
Hi, April, I don’t know anybody with money over here, old or new. I live in Cornwall, which is a very pretty rural hell of economic marginalization. All the moneyed people from London bought holiday homes out here, pricing the locals out of the market, so that it’s very unusual for local people in or around their late 20’s / early 30’s not to live with their parents. Wages are low and jobs are hard to come by. You can work for local government or in the service industry catering to the tourists, and there’s not much else. All I have to go by is my boyfriend’s story of a painful encounter with a royal (Princess Anne – he had the audacity to disagree with her observation that “poor people just don’t want to be helped” and she looked at him like he was some kind of filth on her shoe) and his mother’s stories of being hidden behind a pillar in the school choir during her solos because, although she had the loveliest voice by far, her uniform was too small and a bit tatty – her working class parents couldn’t afford to buy her a new one every year. Also I hear stories of his grandmother, very upper class and an absolutely horrible person by all accounts.
I would say James Purnell is pretty representative of the moneyed idea of social responsibility in England. I wrote about his “Welfare Green Paper” which seeks to duplicate the “successful” US welfare policy of fobbing the poor and sickly off onto the private sector for full time work in exchange for their regular benefits (that’s right, not paid work – “community service”, full time, assigned by the private sector TO the private sector, wherever they choose to put you, or lose your benefits check – no getting out of it for being disabled, or a single mother).
So, not so different from Victorian times. Shades of Dickens. I don’t know if Purnell comes from old or new money, but either way, he’s a very slappable man.
From all quarters I hear that Scotland is MUCH more socially responsible. England is a hole. I can’t wait to come home, or even move somewhere else. Maybe even Scotland!
@Alceste –
Sounds lovely! 😡
Can serfdom be far off?
No kidding! I don’t want to live in a country that is infested with genuine blue-blood noblility ever again. Their sense of entitlement and superiority infects every level of society. At least in Canada the filthy rich, for the most part, have the decency to be subtle about it.
@Alceste
What a shamelessly dismissive, ill-informed and ridiculous remark. You are clearly not living in the same UK that I live in, nor do you appear to have any understanding of the class system in the UK. It is extremely complex, occasionally very obvious, more often very subtle and almost hidden. It is not simply about money, it is not simply about education, it is not simply about any one word “concept”.
There are much more pressing issues in UK politics than that characterised by your “let’s stick it to the toffs” mentality. Ethnicity is a much bigger barrier to social, economic and welfare progression than traditional concepts of class – and that is a real issue that needs serious attention from the main parties in UK politics.
Finally, your views on Scotland’s supposed utopian state are quaint and rather laughable. If you want to see real old world class differences, just visit the Highlands of Scotland! However, even then, you may be a bit disappointed to find that the occupant of the Laird’s Castle is no longer the crusty old 14th Duke of something or other, but is a Russian oil billionaire or a Premier League soccer star…