I'm privileged. I'm a white male born
in a rich part of a rich country to parents whose employment was as
stable as their relationship. I went to a state school but by virtue
of academic selection it was able to pretend convincingly to be a
private one. To those thinking perhaps this Buckinghamshire grammar school was an engine of social mobility, I should point out that when
I arrived at Oxford University one of the things that struck me was
its social and ethnic diversity.
At Oxford, I met people who'd been to
comprehensives for the first time and I learned that they'd faced
hostility from less successful pupils to a far greater degree than I
had. I think this was due to the degree of inequality; underachievers
at my school got Cs or in rare cases Ds, at their schools the lowest
grades were Fs, Gs and Us. Perhaps because of this none of them were
as positive about school as I was; they were happier to have left. I
loved school, but I couldn't tell if this was because it was a more
equal society or because it was full of rich, privileged boys like
me.
My journey continued when I went to
work in Central Foundation Girls School, a comprehensive in Tower
Hamlets. I made tea for SMT meetings and the Head's lunch; on my CV
it says 'School Butler' though I was really more of a footman. Later
I became Exams Officer, a sideways move, and in my three and half
years at Central I met a new group for the first time: working class
people who weren't succeeding academically. I volunteered for break
and lunch duty because most of day was spent with SIMS, a boring
colleague, and I was intrigued by the pupils, especially those who
were unlike any people I'd ever met before.
Schools are great places to work
because they're full of people who choose to spend their lives
improving the lives of others and conversations down the pub after
work frequently turned to how the school could be improved. Although
all the teachers wanted kids to succeed regardless of background, few
of them expected that to happen. Paradoxically, it seemed to me that
those who cared the most about the poor kids were the most convinced
that they were victims of their circumstances. Those same kids whom I
met didn't strike me as victims at all, they seemed intelligent and
purposeful.
I blogged in an earlier piece why I
think those children made a rational choice to fail in education.
Here I want to take issue with the concept of 'check your privilege'
which seems to want to confine opinions about groups of people to
members of those groups – black people should talk about race, gay
people homosexuality, poor people class. I'm absolutely not saying my
opinions about working class kids are more valid than anyone else's,
only that they're valid. I want to live in an equal society with no
class distinctions so becoming the change I want to see means having
the right to discuss anyone, regardless of their background. I came to the unusual opinion that the curriculum, not bad teaching
or crippling poverty is responsible for the achievement gap because,
not in spite, of my unusually privileged upbringing.
So by all means let's check our
privilege, but let's not be checked by it.
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