‘Privileged background’ is the buzz phrase in this election.

Cameron apparently has, so does Clegg, Gordon Brown would tell you that despite being the son of Manse in a poor neighbourhood, he didn’t.

What exactly does privileged mean in this context? I ask in particular after reading this blog post and its comments.

Under-privileged is a special word in Nu-Labour speak. It is something to be avoided at all costs, something which can only be eradicated by eradicating ‘privilege’ itself.

A privilege is theoretically a special right or advantage that only one person or group has. In election-speak, it has been reduced to one colloquial meaning. That either your parents could afford to, and decided to, pay for your education – or, if really pushed to its limit, that your parents were sufficiently motivated to encourage you to overcome the ‘handicap’ of not having a private education.

Nu-Labour is obsessed with the notion that a plain ordinary state education requires a tump of money poured into its teaching staff in order not to leave you ‘under-privileged’.

In comparison with the Nu-Labour definition of ‘privileged’ it would make more sense to pour the money into the parent’s pockets, to enable them to pay for the education that miraculously turns you from under-privileged into privileged – but no, they prefer to put the money into teaching staff.

Yet they concede themselves, that even if you go to a state school, you can still qualify as ‘privileged’ if you had parents who encouraged you:

I think you have just inadvertently admitted that you did have greater educational opportunity than most others. Your assertion, that your parents wouldn’t have dreamt of leaving the school to teach you to read, says it all really.

So, not really about the schools, more about the parents? If that were true, no child would ever escape the poverty of their background – and millions do, regardless of the state of the parent’s pockets.

The real trap is the socialist didactic which says that you can never escape your background. The sense of hopelessness which they instil into the sons and daughters of their traditional voters.

They have removed something from society which was there as recently as 1980 – hope, belief in yourself, the freedom to create yourself, the personal responsibility to do so.

Generations of working class children have thronged to the public libraries since the turn of the last century. That is what they were built for – not the ‘privileged’ with racks of leather bound books in mahogany cases; they were built for the sons of the coal miners, the steel workers, to escape from the foetid over crowded world of ‘home’, to a land of peace and quiet, knowledge, entertainment, and wonder.

Several generations of children did so. They used the public libraries to teach themselves that which they could not learn in the village school. They believed it was their right to do so.

“Let me just say this though. Education is not a level playing field and to say otherwise is plain silly. Some of these kids who go to schools in deprived areas have almost zero chance of success. For a start, the teachers are not up to standard and the learning environment. Well, it isn’t. Blaming the parents for lack of interest is also daft. They have no options.”

The coal miners of the 1880s had no interest, they had no education, they often actively discouraged their children, especially their daughters – and yet those children grew up to become doctors, engineers, scientists – long before we had a Labour government pouring money into edukashun, edukashun, edukashun.

We have hospitals full of doctors who have come from abroad, some even from mind bogglingly basic environments, with no electricity, scant water, and no public library. Afghanistan, Iraq, teetering on the edge of the Stone Age, still manages to produce educated minds that learn enough to compete with the ‘privileged’ in this country.

Those who are not ‘educated’ in a formal sense, still open their minds to the possibility that there is a better life for them out there somewhere, they trek across land for thousands of miles, they cling to the underside of the Eurostar, the live 10 to a room and grub for cockles.

Yet Nu-Labour maintain their mantra that our feral youth who know no more than the Jeremy Kyle show, a can of Stella and a punch up on the way home from the kebab shop, are suffering from ‘under-privilege’.

In a sense, they are right, they are under privileged. Not because others are privileged, but because they have had removed from them the privilege of believing that you are a fresh life. That it is your life. That you can do with it what you want.

That in fact your life is your responsibility, not your parent’s, not the State’s.

They have been taught – to be ‘receivers’ not ‘takers’.

I am reminded of a girl admitted to Aberystwyth Law School. State educated, a bright girl, but not dedicated enough to have studied for ‘A’ levels – the forgiving State had given her another chance. She was a Welsh speaker, and Welsh speakers were urgently needed to train as lawyers – her language skill was virtually her only qualification.

Now she sat lolled in her chair in a seminar, baffled by the seminar question she had been posed with two week’s warning.

“I dunno” she said – being vaguely bi-lingual.

Eventually she was given the answer.

“Nobody told me that, how am I expected to know?”

“By looking it up in the (exceptionally well supplied!) Law Library?”

“It’s your job to teach me” she replied.

No dear, it’s your responsibility to learn.

Letters From A Tory » First Class posts on Monday

April 26, 2010 at 21:34

1
beastfromhull April 26, 2010 at 07:59

Wonderful post – I’ve had the same opinion for a long time – it’s only now, when I see it written down like this, that I realise it.

2
1327 April 26, 2010 at 08:52

Don’t forget you may have dyslexia , ADD , Aspergers or what ever this weeks latest syndrome is. At work we have a few work experience teenagers every year and many state school ones arrive and tell me of their syndrome within minutes of arriving. After a week or two it usually becomes obvious that the teenager is normal enough and may even be quite bright but the terrible school they attended has decided to label them (indeed to almost program them) that they have a certain syndrome and that is why they can’t achieve anything.

Its a terrible thing to see an otherwise bright 15 year old who is more or less illiterate after 10 years of schooling and make you wonder what they do all day.

3
The Man with Many Chins April 26, 2010 at 08:56

Excellent post Anna.

4
JohnRS April 26, 2010 at 08:58

My wife’s Welsh grandfather came from a working class family and worked on the railways in South Wales all his life. He only had very basic schooling but he was one of the most inquisitive and curious people I’ve ever met. You see he’d spent time reading and reading and reading. As a young man (and later) the library was his way out. He’d read books I’d never heard of, had sensible informed, well thought out opinions on the world (most of which I disagreed with) and didnt believe his position in life blocked him from anything. Even in his eighties he always wanted to know about how new things worked; mobile phones, computers, sat nav, the Internet etc.

He made sure his children got a better start in life than he did. He scraped together enough money to let them both go to the local grammar school and one of them went to University….probably the first person in his street to do that.

Now the lefties at local and national level with their equality and privilege drivel have closed the grammar school and the library is only open when no-one can get to it. Will the current generation break out and do better for themselves and their kids like he did? I doubt it.

5
Sabot April 26, 2010 at 09:12

I have a son who is dyslexic. Can’t spell for toffee.

In retrospect I am beginning to suspect that he was just a victim of the on/of, on/of Phonetic Spelling Experiment of the sixties and seventies.

6
lenko April 26, 2010 at 09:24

I’m an old fogey — I admit it. I’ve been fighting privilege all my life. My parents forced me — FORCED ME — to stay in and do my school homework, while other kids were privileged to play footie in the streets. When I was expelled at 15 (don’t ask), I was forced to work for a living, while the privileged classes signed on. When I joined the services I had to soldier and sweat while others were privileged to stay in Civvy Street and get rat-arsed most nights. When I got married I had to bloody work some more, just to support a wife and two kids, while my privileged mates were still whooping it up and pissing through people’s letter-boxes twice a week.

All my miserable life I’ve been down-trodden by the privileged classes. When is someone going to end this torment?

7
Anna Raccoon April 26, 2010 at 10:28

lenko,
You are so right, that is exactly what I was trying to put across in my ham fisted way – there are different types of privilege.
Personally, I have always thought I was privileged in that I didn’t have parents, therefore no expectations as to what direction my life was going to take, no pressures to ‘conform’, no disappointment that I hadn’t chosen a career path they approved of.
Free to make whatever I wanted of my life, and that is the greatest privilege of all.
Unfortunately, the thing none of us spotted before it was too late, is that NU-Labour’s raison d’etre is to ’support the underdog’ – and they were in danger of running out of under dogs – so they have sytematically set about creating a client group of underdogs who don’t believe that they have any choice.
Labour have no more intention of curing their problems than flying – for if they do, they lose their voter base.

8
berenike April 26, 2010 at 10:32

“Labour have no more intention of curing their problems than flying – for if they do, they lose their voter base.”

yep.

9
Fred Thrung April 26, 2010 at 10:35

Another outstanding post from Ms Raccoon. I read your comment at Jackart’s place and was expecting this.
As ever I agree with most of what you say. Just two points, though: (1) Philo Farnsworth clearly had (as do you) a well above average intellect and (2) you were able, for whatever reason, to embrace the concept of individual responsibility. The defenders of Kershaw seem to have neither of those advantages. Whether you attribute their attitudes (and grasp of spelling and grammar) to parental neglect, schooling, today’s societal attitudes or recent government policies, you *were* privileged because of those two points. And I say that as someone whose background seems to have many echoes of yours, insofar as you have shared it with us.

10
Fred Thrung April 26, 2010 at 10:36

Sorry – your response to Lengo made my slow contribution redundant.

11
Old Slaughter April 26, 2010 at 11:47

How I would love to hear what Dr. David Livingstone would make of all this nonsense.

12
Mr Civil Libertarian April 26, 2010 at 11:52

As Rothbard put it, Egalitarianism is a Revolt Against Nature. Inequality is, far from an evil, a great opportunity.

Of course, when an egalitarian hears “Inequality is a good thing”, to them it means “Poverty is a good thing”. This is obviously nonsense.

13
Rightwinggit April 26, 2010 at 12:12

Keep ‘em thick, and keep ‘em poor,

Then they will vote new laboure.

14
Clarissa April 26, 2010 at 12:33

It is all about keeping people in their place. By removing their chances of bettering themselves you can drip feed them money and brainwash them into believing that it is all the fault of the nasty capitalist, that rich person in the better part of town etc.

An educated population of people capable of thinking from themselves is not what the government (socialist variants in particular) want. Our problem now is that we are now onto the second or third generations of this in some places and undoing that many years of indoctrination is going to be difficult.

15
ivan April 26, 2010 at 13:14

As an ex-teacher – departed in disgust in the 60s – I see Clarissa as almost correct. The missing ingredient, and one reason I quit, is teaching the kids to THINK.

If you teach people to think they find there is no need to be told what to think by the ruling elite – and what would they do then, poor things, when the population reject their dictates. Education helps to improve the nation but is not essential to thinking. An educated person may not be a thinking person but a thinking person may be educated.

As Lenko and you say, Anna, there is privilege and privilege depending on who defines it and for what purpose.

16
A Brave New World April 26, 2010 at 14:14

Some say that breast fed children’s brains will be more developed than children fed on cattle milk. How do you get around this? Ban breast feeding?
or compulsory breastfeeding for all?

The ultimate solution if you subscribe to the socialist egalitarian ideal is to remove all children from their parents at birth and let the State raise them – this would remove all possibility of inequality.

17
Sabot April 26, 2010 at 17:31

I have to admit that I was privileged. Privileged to spend fourteen years of my life in destitution while I paid Public School fees to right the damage that had been done to my children by The State School system.
It was worth every painful penny.

18
Alan Douglas April 27, 2010 at 07:43

“the terrible school they attended has decided to label them (indeed to almost program them) that they have a certain syndrome”

That “terrible school” did so because they got EXTRA MONEY FOR EACH CHILD SO LABELLED.

THAT is the true disgrace in the education system – they are PAID to make children think they are stupid.

Criminal. But effective in creating client voters ….

Alan Douglas

19
Pericles April 27, 2010 at 08:39

Is there any-one out there able to explain to me the benefit to society of ‘equality’, even if it could be established and maintained ?  Inequality is the natural state of things.  When all things are equal, what is of value ?

The only objective of egalitarianism is, as stated above, its own perpetuation.

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