working class hero...

"A working class hero is something to be..."

Or something like that. Seems to me that it is the middle classes who have always wanted to mythologise the working class. We want to create a class of people who are somehow worthy, if not as worthy as we are. It is the continuation of the human need to always be better than someone else.

But lets face it, we are now living in the 21st Century and, theoretically, there is no longer a class system. But in reality there is. And although no longer obvious it is a system that is institutionalised. It is a system based on expectations. A system that relegates certain people to a certain class - admittedly there is far more chance of upward mobility but none-the-less there are certain expectations placed on certain strata of society.

I currently have the privilege of working with almost one hundred builders on a construction site. And what I have realised is that, although rougher than the middle class men I usually meet, the guys I work with have only one key difference. Throughout their lives people have had lowered expectations of what they could achieve. From the beginning it simply was not expected that these men would be academic or achieve. Which is such a shame for many of then are clever, intelligent people.

It certainly would be interesting to have an educationalist survey them and find out how many of them are dyslexic or have had some other form of learning impairment. I expect the numbers would be rather high.

It is a bourgeois conceit to believe that simply because we are educated or have an increased earning power that we have any real superiority. It is also a conceit to idealise a class that expects under achievement.