Ah yes, the old “bootstraps” crowd.
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At least some part of that has to do with how you were taught by your parents. I think that any parent is likely to teach their kids the life skills that they used to get to where they are, and it is also reasonable that those kids would see that standard as normal and acceptable. Some of the poorer kids that I went to school with absolutely did not see the point of participating at all in their education. Of course there were some wealthier kids that did the same thing. I am not even going to pretend that it was an indication that they were or are lazy people. I feel fairly sure that they have to work very hard in their adult lives, just to keep their kids fed and clothed. Thinking back, it really bothers me that this was allowed to happen. If someone had convinced those kids at a young age that getting an education was important, they would at least had options when they became adults. And I don’t have a solution to that problem.
And from my own experience, having wealthy parents does not mean that they are going to support you as an adult, or influence anyone else to do so. I had a great childhood, and got to experience things that few people of any age get to do. But after the age of 12, if I wanted to buy something, I was going to need to find a job. Of course I was never going to go hungry, but not having a job was never an option. School was never optional. The idea of skipping school or shoplifting or any sort of crap like that literally never even occurred to me as a possibility. And I taught my kids the same basic rules. My oldest is in college now, and I am pretty confident that he is going to do well. But that is on him. He got in on his own abilities. A large part of his motivation, and mine when I was his age, is fear of having to explain to my Dad why he screwed up. I cannot explain how powerful a motivating force that can be.
I think this shows how “life skills” can function as a marketing code word for “parents’ assets” (esp. real estate).
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Ladies and gentlemen, the just world fallacy in action.
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See, that’s the thing. My (half) brother has a 6th grade education, because once he was 12 or 13, he was too busy scraping his alcoholic mother off the floor everyday to be able to get to class. He probably wouldn’t have eaten as a teenager if he hadn’t shoplifted from the corner store and learned some basic B&E skills.
He’s just past 30 now, and despite the fact that he has more common sense and makes better decisions that just about anybody I know, it doesn’t change the fact that he has a prison record and took 4 tries to get his GED. He’s got a little place and a job at a garage, but his life ain’t getting any better, regardless of how much bootstrapping he does.
At the end of the day, hard work, determination, and good choices will take you very, very far- But some of us have much, much further to go than others. Someone born to middle class parents can coast into a middle class life, or work very hard and become rich. Someone born to rich parents can coast into being rich, or work very hard and become wealthy. But someone born poor, well, if they work hard and make good choices, they might end up as blue collar.
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The Free Market Jesus response would be that the ethical thing for poor people to do is starve to death if they can’t afford to eat. It’s always the ones who have who tell others that they should do without.
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I’m not rich, but I feel successful. I do become defensive when I read something like this, but I agree with everything he says. My wife and I worked hard to have this life, but we had the advantage of launching from a comfortably middle class starting place, thanks to our parents. We were very fortunate to be born into the families we were, and then to have the series of life experiences and fortuitous circumstances that put us here.
Lots of people earn a good life, but only some of us get it. When we do get it, it’s threatening when people assert that we’re no more entitled to it than anyone else. The real problem is that you shouldn’t have to earn a good life at all.
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Both my parents are college educated. It was always taken for granted growing up that I would be going to college. This very much dictated how I behaved in high school and choices I made there. Accepting it as an inevitability proved important.
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See, I disagree with that. I think there’s nothing better than working hard and becoming successful at something you find meaningful, and I think that people should be rewarded for hard work, good ideas, and perseverance. I actually believe in most of what Ayn Rand said about the virtues of capitalism.
At the same time though, I think there needs to be a minimum standard which we as a society simply do not allow anyone to fall below. There’s absolutely no reason a person living in the 21st century should be without food, shelter, or medical care. Period.
Also, we need to measure success in more than black ink in a ledger. As far as I’m concerned, someone who runs a summer camp for city kids or cooks fantastic dinners for their friends is a more valuable human being than someone who makes a fortune in mergers and acquisitions.
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You attributed your childhood support as a key to your success. Could you say you were fortunate to have this support system when others did not?
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This is pretty much what I believe. I would add safe, reliable transportation, educational opportunity, and connectivity.
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To be fair, the comprehensive system does have a lot of variation of quality. People will obviously want their children to go to a Nelson Thomlinson (Ofsted report: Outstanding) or Trinity School (Good to outstanding, and it looks like they now take LGBT bullying far more seriously that when I was there) rather than a Richard Rose (Requires improvement, which is an improvement on “original school closed because of consistently poor results”).
Obviously we need better schools that the failing comprehensives, I just don’t think that selective schools and the “eleven-plus” are the solution.
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Yeah, exactly - having college educated parents means you’ll not only be raised with that expectation (effecting any number of choices you make), but also provide the support to make that happen. Some non-college educated parents might have that expectation, but are unable to provide that support. If you have parents who don’t event have that expectation, you’d have to start, at a pretty early age, making decisions that essentially go against what you’re being taught by your parents. There would have to be someone else in your life, some mentor, who has the expectation that you’re going to college to get you to do that.
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In what sense though? My (single) mother has an advanced degree and it was always a given that I would be on the college path, but in my case that led to a lot of fucking around in high school – I was already on a “gifted” track and didn’t feel the need to prove anything. (I took pride in waiting until the night before a paper was due to start working on it then getting an A with three hours’ sleep (and before Adderall was a thing.))
Kids from less-privileged backgrounds would likely be more inclined to put their noses to the grindstone, as for them college is something to be achieved rather than something you step on your dick and fall into.
I agree, but the problem seems to be that a significant chunk of the American public thinks it’s perfectly fine to use their “hard earned money” to build bombs and blow up foreigners but it’s a terrible waste to feed and clothe and shelter their less fortunate neighbors.
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I don’t think the problem with the grammar school system was the grammar schools so much as it was the secondary moderns.
But the comprehensive system was pretty shit too. I think that what I’ve made of my life is much more down to supportive parents than my schools, which were generally pretty meh. Certainly excellence wasn’t encouraged. You were a nuisance if you were pushing the teachers for more challenging material.
Also, in my family’s case, at least, the grammar school system worked for our social mobility. If it wasn’t for it, my dad wouldn’t have got to university and into a professional career.
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But you can’t have a selective school system without having a population who aren’t selected.
Of course, in a lot of the UK, we now have selection by postcode and house prices, with supposedly “good” schools being massively oversubscribed. As I’ve said before, the only way to get a comprehensive school system that works is to abandon the idea of “school choice” and have school districts that cut across economic class lines. And fund the schools properly. And build them so they don’t fall down. And so on.
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I know. Ideally, everyone would get a comprehensive education that was of the quality of the old grammar schools. But that’d be expensive. 
Postcode lottery is inevitable. Wealthier patents will always do what they can to give their kids the best education they can.
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You undersetimate the popularity of MMORPG’s I think. Oh yeah, you be killing. Everyday, it’s as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced…then respawned somewhere, angry.
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Of course parental support is very important. But it seems like people here and elsewhere consider having parents who take the job of parenting seriously as some sort of unfair advantage. I disagree, and think it goes back to choices.
