'Psychologists carry some responsibility for present-day inequalities'

It's wonderful to see the BPS embrace the issues of inequalities and the significance of class, topics left too much in the hands of sociologists in the past. But I read through the special issue of The Psychologist without finding any reference to the role psychology played in making matters worse. This role revolved around limited understanding of psychometrics and its interaction with terrible flaws in the educational system.

I grew up in a Victorian terrace house that had eleven flats, each one room. My parents had menial jobs, their limited opportunity for promotion stymied by antisemitism. Yet I was able to 'pass the 11-plus' and get a decent education at a city grammar school. That enabled me to get the education which opened the way to university (paid for by the local authority). 

However, psychometric studies of the 11-plus assessment procedure revealed, perhaps not surprisingly, that it was biased towards children from middle-class backgrounds. This is where psychologists went wrong, together with those associated with them in education. Psychologists should have put great effort into a) reducing the bias in the whole assessment procedure, including how children were selected and prepared for it, b) tackling head-on the iniquity that was the 'secondary modern' school system, which oozed indications of failure and, most importantly c) arguing clearly for different cognitive and intellectual propensities in children that should be catered for, without those differences being associated with status and ability. Instead, psychologists fostered the confused idea of the non-selective 'comprehensive' school that, in the main still, apes many aspects of poor grammar schools, with sink components that mirror the worst of secondary moderns.

I do not think I would have found my way into becoming successful a psychologist within the present educational framework, and its punitive funding system. The psychological recognition that different children have different educational needs should be at the forefront of considering how society maintains inequalities.

These differences between children have little to do directly with class (whatever that is), and should carry no implication of worth, or value to society. With the demise of selective education, that recognition, perhaps ironically, currently is only really able to be embraced in the better, very expensive, Public Schools.

David Canter

Honorary Fellow of the BPS

Emeritus Professor at The University of Liverpool

Is there such a thing as a general 'working class culture'?

Reading the latest edition of The Psychologist I noted with some surprise that some psychologists consider 'the evidence base which considers social class is relatively scant'. This may be true of experimental psychology but in much social psychological, sociological and linguistic research, particularly in education, it has been a major emphasis for more than 50 years. I was equally surprised by the way the debate had moved on and also by the way it hadn't! The same barriers to progress are identified, mostly within a meritocratic, social mobility framework referring to 'gaps' and 'ceilings'.

Social stereotyping is recognised as a process which reduces expectations, but there is no reference to any of the ethnographic work carried out by sociologists in the 1970s and 80s, which addressed 'typing' in schools in a richer and far more nuanced way than most current experimental studies. Not only is there no engagement with the work of Basil Bernstein or Paul Willis, for example, but most of observations made on class and capital, such as they are, do not reach the level of insight of these authors.

In education, although the gap between disadvantaged students and the rest has come down, this has happened so slowly that it would be 50 years before it was reduced completely. As a result of the pandemic, of course, the gap has increased. In any case, it's difficult to know what this reduction would mean for the class society. As the grade distributions remain roughly the same from year to year, presumably some would have to 'fall' as others 'rose'. So the whole process might be more meritocratic but you're still left with the same social structure.

And what is wrong with that? Someone will still have to do what are commonly referred to as working class jobs e.g. brick layer, plumber, cleaner, delivery driver, bus driver, cook, carer, teaching assistant etc. While none of these would ever be 'top jobs', one would hope in an ideal world they would all be secure, safe, well paid, subject to easily enforceable regulation ( e.g. sick and holiday pay, no arbitrary sacking), a concern for dignity at work, with employers having to create jobs which fostered well-being, fulfilment and a flourishing life, including more control by workers over their working lives, access to trade union support, and so on ( An historical example would be the Guinness factory, Park Royal, in 1950s).

Because of the way society is currently organised, I know it is difficult to see this happening. Most research acknowledges huge disparities between these jobs in most life enhancing aspects. Differentiation in education turns out to be discrimination, as most of the work on streaming confirms. There is discrimination at all levels of the system from unfair assessment processes at school entrance to the overrepresentation of public school students at Oxbridge. This certainly needs to be tackled but it's the 'ladder' itself which needs to be abolished, both materially and culturally. Nobody should feel that their job puts them 'at the bottom of the heap'.

As for moving the debate on, I find some of the current issues, particularly those relating to identity politics, include highly contentious assumptions which are not fully addressed. Is there such a thing as a general 'working class culture'? Do most reported background experiences relate to occupational cultures in specific milieux? Imposter syndrome? As a person coming from a humble background myself, the only imposters I came across were the 'middle class' members of my profession (educational psychology), who, whether trainers or practitioners, hadn't a clue about 'working class' life, so much so that they imagined psychometric tests could tell them something about the intelligence of this lesser form of existence.

John Quicke

Formerly Professor of Education,

The University of Sheffield.

'Corrupt nature of the power in UK higher education must be acknowledged and challenged'

I'd like to thank everyone who contributed to the issue of The Psychologist on social class, for me one of the most important issues the Society has produced. Over the course of my own career, class loomed large. It was a matter of routine in which those from privileged class backgrounds abused their power, and rewarded their friends and family. I saw professorships and associated professorships granted to those who had published little or nothing but had the requisite accent, class background and on occasion, double-barrelled name. Their contributions to scholarship were at best negligible.

In the 1980s having secured a commissioned article with New Scientist to write with Joe Schwartz on the experience of working-class academics in science, they refused to publish it, because they were not happy with the story of class prejudice endemic in the scientific world. I was never promoted in my career, despite my publication record; was threatened for conducting research on student well-being, years before it became fashionable; had my title removed from my office door in several institutions in which I worked. The story is long and painful. 

All the elements of corruption and unaccountable power which permeate the current UK government have been in place in academic life for a long time. So yes, I am in firm agreement with all your contributors that social class needs to become a protected characteristic. But I fear that this will not be possible unless and until the corrupt nature of the power that is entrenched in UK higher education is brought into focus, acknowledged and seriously challenged.

Dr R A Roberts, CPsychol, AFBPsS

London

'How do our new upward venturers feel their experiences differ from those in decades gone by?'

I found it interesting to read in the July/August bumper edition of individuals from disadvantaged sectors of society and the difficulties they experience as they work their ways into professions. From new positions there are fresh perspectives on subcultures and families these people knew in their youth.

There are many texts and tales in similar vein, of discomforts of upward social aspirations and mobility, recorded in fiction of the 1950s. Didn't John Braine and many others down to Arnold Wesker explore the bumpy and uncomfortable routes traversed by talented individuals, into dominant culture and 'spaces' at the top of society? Their tales were of people who were not out of their depths, but who found new discomforts along with sought-after vantage positions.

It would be interesting to hear from our new upward venturers how they feel their experiences differ from those in decades gone by. Do they reckon they are the talented best of their original strata in society – or do they believe there are many more people whom even the freshly improved professional and academic structures are still missing out?

Mallory Wober

London