Article By Dan Holden
All over Britain children, students and adults are being bullied, attacked and beaten up for things that shouldn’t matter or involve them. In the workplace or the playground people separate out into groups based on the most trivial of things. Dan Holden looks at the class system and how it continues to affect young people even today.
It first struck me that this was such a big problem when I just happened to look out across the field at my school. Everyone was split up into different groups; people were avoiding others on small minor things such as skin colour or accents. Without realising it we judge each other automatically based on superficial things. But why?!
Many young people think it’s to do with music interests but aside from these more changeable differences there is the more harmful one of class.
The class system is an age old structure which for many years has divided the country into a hierarchical (list by ‘importance’) order based on background, money, race and political outlook. These days what this has boiled down to are sets of modern characteristics that stereotype us under a particular ‘class’.
The stereotype basically goes a little bit like this:
| Classes | Stereotypes | ||
| Working Class | Parents have low-paid basic jobs (e.g. builders, shop-keepers, sometimes unskilled) | Usually live in a poor area or council property | Aggressive and impulsive-chav |
| Middle Class | Parents have fairly well-paid jobs (e.g. doctors, lawyers) | Usually live in a larger houses with a few bedrooms | Well-mannered, “educated” |
| Upper Class | Parents might be celebrities or aristocracy and might not have to work | MASSIVE house-loads of bedrooms | Very posh or privileged etc. feel superior |
“Stereotyping is the biggest problem…people divide on those stereotypes”.
Stereotyping is the reason why we all assume things about each other based on insignificant things. This pointless set of characteristics should not decide who we sit with at lunch and should not group us all into one person. However, stereotypes are always based on truth so many people fit into what you expect them to but this is extremely unfair as they may not be all of that stereotype. An example can be shown in the conversation we had in our editorial group about this; “What kind of background [did I have]?-Three bed roomed house, big garden-no, council estate.”
Fortunately for us the class system is starting to crumble; the boundaries between the classes have become blurred. This is partly because there are more options for employment and education, and more freedom to define yourself and your future.
For those of us who are snobby about being either working class or middle class, there is no point; it’s completely stupid. Each class is reliant on each other and always has been. The working class provides all the basics; they built the country. The middle class then provides things like health care, teaching and the lawyers etc. The upper class finally provides entertainment; actors, rock stars and of course the royal family, who sit there and bring in tourism and drink tea. However we should not stick to our own class and we should be able to define ourselves.
People can themselves maintain these stereotypes because it’s natural to want to belong and feel safer with people we can relate to. I spoke to Vicky who considers by class ‘standards’ she was brought up very working class. She explained to me that in her experience what is expected of you can hold you down and affect your future decision making “you feel like you can’t aim very high because you’re not meant to.” This means that there can be a mental block for those people when it comes to defining themselves outside of class. Also there is the view that working-class people are proud of who they are and they have a fear that by aiming higher they will take on the stereotypes of the middle-class i.e. becoming snooty and judging-which is hypocritical!
For the middle class, they are expected to do well in their life and so it’s easy for them to achieve things; for example going to university. However this can also lead to a pressure to achieve, following their parents success. The middle-class can also assume by accent, for example, that someone is working class and so behaves really aggressively when they don’t. Which is stupid…again.
All this stuff about who we think each other is shouldn’t matter and we should judge each other by the way that we are. We need to see past the stereotypes. We shouldn’t let our parents, backgrounds, race and political outlook restrict our future and what we want as an individual.
By Dan Holden