Michael Merrick

I gave in... @missmc.bsky.social

BBC Radio 4 - Four Thought, Socially Mobile? Michael Merrick challenges how we think about social mobility.

You might like this: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b...

And why does it happen? Well, those making the policy, figuring out the priorities and the values and the direction, are all drawn from the same side of the fence. This is the great destructiveness of gradclass protectionism - it captures perspectives as much as institutions

The failure to understand this perspective, to recognise this culture clash, to permit that this is a legitimate (even healthy!) striving after the good life, is what drives so much policy failure in this area - and which keeps on making the situation worse.

What they want instead is a world where they don't *have* to be more like you in order to get on. Where they can be who and what and where they are and still have a good life. And where the tables aren't tilted against them for doing so.

All understandable as it goes (those sound like good things after all) but it introduces a blindspot, which is simply this: not everybody sees those things as chains from which they must be freed, sometimes they're quite happy and don't need rescued, nor do they wish to be more like you

This is a strong trend in the wider culture of course - a dramatic origin story is now standard, regardless of background or station - but it also provides a purpose for education that reinforces liberal priors: freeing oneself from the chains of birth, ignorance, place, and poverty

What I find most interesting is how little engagement there is from the establishment worldview. I think it's just anathema - if liberal thought is at root about empowerment, then education is its Odyssean epic, a struggle-tale of overcoming the odds, toward self-empowerment and freedom

I've written about this - and the broader educational culture clash - for over 10 years. There has been progress - social mobility has become more nuanced since the days of (eg) Gove and Greening, degree apprenticeships are a limited positive - but it's often 1 step forwards and 2 steps back.

Still I have BlueSky now so maybe things are on the up.

thanks Sam... will try and live up to that intro

wash your mouth out Freedman

this isn't capitulation @samfr.bsky.social ... just a brief and uncharacteristic period of being open to new experiences that's all

There are others but I am sure you get the point. And I remain convinced that a left-wing account of working-class dignity is recoverable, but it involves pushing back against the idea there is no such thing as working-class dignity - or that the goal must be to escape.

BBC Radio 4 - Four Thought, Socially Mobile? Michael Merrick challenges how we think about social mobility.

And this too: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b...

And also here: michaelmerrick.co.uk/2016/12/31/t...

And here: michaelmerrick.co.uk/2019/03/04/l...

And another one here: michaelmerrick.co.uk/2017/08/18/n...

Glad I brought the blog back - here's one here: michaelmerrick.co.uk/2020/03/31/t...

Or, if you're worried about the outcomes of white working-class kids, you could spend a moment thinking whether or not the thing missing from a system set up as a pipeline to university might not actually be more focus on the pipeline to university

I mean, if you think this is the issue then you could stop the gradclass protectionism tomorrow, reopen the professions and careers to kids whose parents and grandparents were allowed to enter without a degree and tens of thousands of debt. But no

Oh for pity's sake. There is a liberal worldview that insists the only way a working-class kid can live a life of dignity is to stop being working class - and to be more like their lanyardist saviours. It drives me utterly mad