The incestuousness of the British route to government kind of boggles my mind. I'd love to hear from UK Tilders about their experience with the British class system in higher education. I don't...
The incestuousness of the British route to government kind of boggles my mind.
I'd love to hear from UK Tilders about their experience with the British class system in higher education. I don't know that the U.S. Harvard or Yale grad ecosystem is equivalent - Oxford strikes me as an incredibly tightly-knit anti-meritocratic arrangement.
Likewise, commentary on the French Ecole'
or other "academic route to power" systems is welcome.
Financial Times content is shared through Outline.com because FT's subscription cost is outrageous, €300/year. I'm paying for it, but links I share through FT can only be clicked three times without requiring you to register. I feel entirely entitled to give you ad libitum access to their marginally-better-than-free content.
This is a topic that I find absolutely fascinating, not least because I've ended up closer to it than I ever expected to be. I was an angrily anti-establishment teenager, from a state school that...
This is a topic that I find absolutely fascinating, not least because I've ended up closer to it than I ever expected to be. I was an angrily anti-establishment teenager, from a state school that was somewhere between bad and almost adequate, and the financial/class background that that implies. I wanted nothing to do with tradition, or class, or the systems that perpetuated it.
Cut to a decade and a half later and I still hold a lot of those opinions, but good fortune and, to be blunt, money puts me in a position that a decent number of my friends and peers grew up far on the other side of the class divide.
The first thing I'll say is that Oxford, perhaps above all else, is a damn good university. To say the institution itself anti-meritocratic is something that I'd call unfair, although I think that's a much more reasonable description of the Eton->Oxford->Tory party pipeline. Oxford is far from faultless in being part of this, but it's a large institution that I don't think can be defined just by that aspect.
When so much comes down to networking, and when one institution provides intimate access to past and future leaders, it's perhaps not entirely surprising how much it dominates politics. While still definitely imperfect, there is serious and ongoing work coming from within to make that more accessible - to retain their position as the training ground for world leaders, but allow anyone in on merit. And on numbers alone Oxford is slowly becoming less insular.
All that said, I think one of the most telling lines in the article was actually a relatively innocuous one: "Its officers wore white tie, speakers black tie, and everyone called each other “honourable member”."
It's a shibboleth. It comes down to the little things. The people who "belong" are recognisable by their shared background, even set apart from those who joined the same path later on merit. They know black tie from white instinctively (and no, it isn't just the tie) and wear both with comfort. They reminisce over the shared trials of boarding school. They think that making an odd groaning-jeering sound in the middle of a debate is a perfectly normal thing to do.
I'm less worried about Oxford's influence, and more about the groups within that university (and within the schools before, and in certain London institutions afterwards) that consider themselves "the right kind of people".
I'll admit to an Orwellian confusion at the British notion of a "public school" as one not operated by the government. The cradle-to-ruling-class pipelines of Eton, et al. have their parallels in...
I'll admit to an Orwellian confusion at the British notion of a "public school" as one not operated by the government. The cradle-to-ruling-class pipelines of Eton, et al. have their parallels in the U.S., but I don't think there's anything comparably overt at the pre-university level.
As you mentioned, there are Etonian bubbles that persist within Oxford, however much the university tries to uphold academic excellence. The parallel here is in "Ivy League" private social clubs, societies, and fraternities. While Ivy connections often lead to positions in government, there's no guaranteed political party leadership or backing to stand for election. Private industry leadership positions, lofty salaries, and insider information are the prizes from those networks. To some extent, that's being diluted by the rise of technology industries, where Yale social connections are much less meaningful than a hard degree from Stanford. The East Coast Ivies still dominate government administration, but U.S. politics are increasingly determined by California tech and Texas oil money.
I think the heart of it is that history is an aspect of class in the UK, along with the wealth and connections that apply everywhere. Less so than it used to be, by a wide margin, but still there...
I think the heart of it is that history is an aspect of class in the UK, along with the wealth and connections that apply everywhere. Less so than it used to be, by a wide margin, but still there guiding things.
From what I see in the US, wealth and influence defines class in and of itself - not quite wealth alone, but wealth and a few other social factors that mostly become available alongside the wealth. The UK is heading in that direction, but 800 years of monarchy and aristocracy don't disappear overnight (or even entirely over a century). It's still very possible to have no actual money but a hereditary title that confers a certain level of respect and access, or to have all the wealth an trappings of the upper class but not "really" be one of them because you don't have 17 generations of family history.
In 99% of cases nobody actually notices or cares - the real shift started post WWII and I'd say it's within a generation of completion - but there are the still more conservative holdouts where it matters. Such as the Conservative party. And the public/private school distinction you mentioned: they're all actually private schools, rather than state, but the ones with the history and the cachet get to use the term "public" for historical reasons; it was a legitimate description at the time, but nowadays it's just a reminder that they have something that money can't buy.
The incestuousness of the British route to government kind of boggles my mind.
I'd love to hear from UK Tilders about their experience with the British class system in higher education. I don't know that the U.S. Harvard or Yale grad ecosystem is equivalent - Oxford strikes me as an incredibly tightly-knit anti-meritocratic arrangement.
Likewise, commentary on the French Ecole'
or other "academic route to power" systems is welcome.
Financial Times content is shared through Outline.com because FT's subscription cost is outrageous, €300/year. I'm paying for it, but links I share through FT can only be clicked three times without requiring you to register. I feel entirely entitled to give you ad libitum access to their marginally-better-than-free content.
This is a topic that I find absolutely fascinating, not least because I've ended up closer to it than I ever expected to be. I was an angrily anti-establishment teenager, from a state school that was somewhere between bad and almost adequate, and the financial/class background that that implies. I wanted nothing to do with tradition, or class, or the systems that perpetuated it.
Cut to a decade and a half later and I still hold a lot of those opinions, but good fortune and, to be blunt, money puts me in a position that a decent number of my friends and peers grew up far on the other side of the class divide.
The first thing I'll say is that Oxford, perhaps above all else, is a damn good university. To say the institution itself anti-meritocratic is something that I'd call unfair, although I think that's a much more reasonable description of the Eton->Oxford->Tory party pipeline. Oxford is far from faultless in being part of this, but it's a large institution that I don't think can be defined just by that aspect.
When so much comes down to networking, and when one institution provides intimate access to past and future leaders, it's perhaps not entirely surprising how much it dominates politics. While still definitely imperfect, there is serious and ongoing work coming from within to make that more accessible - to retain their position as the training ground for world leaders, but allow anyone in on merit. And on numbers alone Oxford is slowly becoming less insular.
All that said, I think one of the most telling lines in the article was actually a relatively innocuous one: "Its officers wore white tie, speakers black tie, and everyone called each other “honourable member”."
It's a shibboleth. It comes down to the little things. The people who "belong" are recognisable by their shared background, even set apart from those who joined the same path later on merit. They know black tie from white instinctively (and no, it isn't just the tie) and wear both with comfort. They reminisce over the shared trials of boarding school. They think that making an odd groaning-jeering sound in the middle of a debate is a perfectly normal thing to do.
I'm less worried about Oxford's influence, and more about the groups within that university (and within the schools before, and in certain London institutions afterwards) that consider themselves "the right kind of people".
I'll admit to an Orwellian confusion at the British notion of a "public school" as one not operated by the government. The cradle-to-ruling-class pipelines of Eton, et al. have their parallels in the U.S., but I don't think there's anything comparably overt at the pre-university level.
As you mentioned, there are Etonian bubbles that persist within Oxford, however much the university tries to uphold academic excellence. The parallel here is in "Ivy League" private social clubs, societies, and fraternities. While Ivy connections often lead to positions in government, there's no guaranteed political party leadership or backing to stand for election. Private industry leadership positions, lofty salaries, and insider information are the prizes from those networks. To some extent, that's being diluted by the rise of technology industries, where Yale social connections are much less meaningful than a hard degree from Stanford. The East Coast Ivies still dominate government administration, but U.S. politics are increasingly determined by California tech and Texas oil money.
I think the heart of it is that history is an aspect of class in the UK, along with the wealth and connections that apply everywhere. Less so than it used to be, by a wide margin, but still there guiding things.
From what I see in the US, wealth and influence defines class in and of itself - not quite wealth alone, but wealth and a few other social factors that mostly become available alongside the wealth. The UK is heading in that direction, but 800 years of monarchy and aristocracy don't disappear overnight (or even entirely over a century). It's still very possible to have no actual money but a hereditary title that confers a certain level of respect and access, or to have all the wealth an trappings of the upper class but not "really" be one of them because you don't have 17 generations of family history.
In 99% of cases nobody actually notices or cares - the real shift started post WWII and I'd say it's within a generation of completion - but there are the still more conservative holdouts where it matters. Such as the Conservative party. And the public/private school distinction you mentioned: they're all actually private schools, rather than state, but the ones with the history and the cachet get to use the term "public" for historical reasons; it was a legitimate description at the time, but nowadays it's just a reminder that they have something that money can't buy.