Working class with middle class values

Reserve. Remorse. Restraint. Not as overt as a baton to the skull. Oppression of the working class in modern day Britain is furtive. The legislated state violence of the battle of Orgreave is an ancient history too hard to swallow with shortbread and tea. Nonetheless, a piece of oppression broke off into your cuppa. It is a ubiquitous reality that higher education is inaccessible for many working class people. It is customary for those in pursuit of a degree to be shamed for identifying as working class.

Labour MP, David Lammy, recently published statistics that show 82 percent of all Oxbridge students in 2015 came from the top two social classes. Such figures are expected from the likes of Oxbridge. But latest figures show that the number of working class students dropping out of university is at its highest in five years. Even in Scotland, land of no tuition fees, fewer students from poor backgrounds make it to university than in the rest of the UK. This is despite multi- million pound investments from Russell Group Universities on access initiatives, outreach activities and scholarships. Where is the education system going wrong?

I grew up in an area that falls within the most deprived five percent of Scotland- It’s safe to say I qualified for an equal access programme. Careers advisors often adopted lop sided sympathy squints when I shared my aspirations to become a lawyer. Thus, I would spend my precious summer months at Edinburgh University. Exuberating juvenile vitality, I perched on the precipice of enlightenment. Well, mostly my seat, in Sociology class. During a discussion of social class, the lecturer asked for a show of hands. Naturally, he worked his way down the pecking order. Beginning with old money oligarchs, to which thankfully the class remained unroused. Subsequently, a mob of meerkats sprang up to the sound of ‘middle class’. Alas, a single, defiant hand raised at the sinful utterance that was ‘the working class’. Lothian’s Equal Access Programme for Schools was not my milieu.

Attending an access initiative for young people from underprivileged backgrounds sparked the commencement of my arduous, fruitless attempt to scramble up the ‘social ladder’. Abjectly, I explained myself: ‘working class with middle class values.’ A Mexican wave of gruntled nods rippled through the class and Thatcher done the Macarena in her grave. Her social aspiration creed was a revolutionary means of undermining working class identities. Political activist Owen Jones perfectly summed up this tactic: ‘There was room at the top, ran the promise: you could improve your lot by edging up the social ladder.’ My callow younger self had no comprehension of ‘middle class values’, simply that the working class had none of merit.

I longed to flourish in the level playing field provided by university. My contemporaries and I would sustain ourselves on student loans and meagre bursaries. Naivety prevailed. The playing ground was bereft of working class individuals, I had to take on the whole team. I hadn’t fathomed that the majority of students would have the privilege of a rent free, debt free university experience. I was to embody the impoverished student stereotype alone. My full student bursary and loan combined was not sufficient to cover university accommodation. My first year at university was tarnished with financial hardship, regardless of the privilege of free education. An education afforded to me on the grounds of segregation, life below the breadline and twenty grand of debt. Bargain.

Law School bestowed a skill set beyond academia. Conformity. Enunciating ‘your Lordship’ in my dialect was synonymous with shredding an electric guitar to Mozart’s Requiem. I was lambasted for not speaking ‘proper English’. Independent Journalist Tom Rasmussen stated that learning to ‘act middle class’ was the most financially viable thing university taught him. In a bid for employability working class identities are being oppressed. My native accent, to this day, is irretrievable. An aspect of my identity lost. A visit home after one semester left my family baffled and myself donned a ‘Ghetto snob’.

The Guardian opinion writer, Poppy Noor, wrote of ‘imposter syndrome’. ‘Waiting for someone to come in and tell you the game is up and it’s time to go home’. This sentiment resonated, I had ‘blagged my way in’. It is imperative that universities review their access programmes, implement further safeguards to reduce dropouts, foster belonging and enhance accessibility. Safeguards that surpass working class ‘buddy systems’ employed by Oxbridge. Universities must be galvanised into accessibility before the last vestige of working class students dissipate.

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