Topics Education

Question Can a good argument be made for encouraging working class parents in particular to pursue education? What I'm trying to get at is this... I get the feeling that, had I come from a more privalidged background, I might have had a lot more support through my school years. My parents received a very poor education and "knew" they weren't really going to amount to much. As a result I was never really helped with school work and was encouraged to follow a trade rather than get further education. As if that was the best of what could be expected from a person of our social status. I've seen the same thing happening with the vast majority of my relatives and others that I grew up with. I hated that sort of working environment and wished I had taken a different path. Although others may be satisfied with that sort of outcome, surely having more options is better. I now do social work in my community which, although satisfying, is sometimes challenging as I see lots of suffering that being better educated would have avoided. I have children of my own now, and it worries me that at some point I'm not going to be able to help them with their school work, that they'll assume that they're not capable of achieving great things, and that they are being held back from a better life just as a result of being from my family. I love my parents who really did their best for me and are proud of my achievements. But they argue "hey, the world's always going to need people to do the lesser jobs....". Surely this can't be right?

Accepted:
August 2, 2012

Comments

You've in effect made several good arguments yourself. But the idea that just because one was born into a certain social stratum, one shouldn't try to get out of it is an idea that has long since lost any plausibility it might have had. In fact, when you think about it, it's hard to see what could recommend that view. Even if we concede that there will always be low-skill jobs needing to be done, it hardly follows that one is obliged to be the one who does them just because of accidents of birth.

If someone is truly content to remain uneducated, or work for low wages or perform unskilled labor, that's one thing. (And there are such people.) But if that's not what you want out of life, It's hard to think of any good reason why you should be expected simply to go along with a life-plan you didn't pick.

A friend of mine who got his PhD when I did came from a working class family. There's nothing wrong with that, and nothing wrong with the work they did. (My family was only pne beneration removed from workin class.) But much to his resentment, his family used to tell him that he shouldn't "get above himself." The idea that aspiring to accomplish more than one's ancestors is "getting above oneself" is a vicious notion, even if those who are in its grip don't mean it that way. The world has benefitted from countless people who have done exactly what that not-at-all innocent way of speaking would have talked them out of.