Rich Kid, Poor Kid
Did anyone see Rich Kid Poor Kid on Channel 4 tonight? I thought it was one of the best documentaries I've seen in a while, really simple, really striking, saying a whole lot about our society and all through the words of the subjects. It was all based on the way in London really really expensive houses are often right next to council estates, and how kids grow up in these two entirely different worlds.
I always used to wonder about that whenever I went to visit Debz, those mentalist mansions right next to the estates. Although some were offices and many were split up for flats some were proper homes. One of the most telling aspects of the doc was how rich girl Alice had been brought up never to turn left out of her house because that way lay the estate, danger and dodgy people, according to her family. But once she went there it didn't take her long to change her perceptions.
Now it's just occured to me to wonder if that was part of the reason my Mum never let me out when I was a kid, unless it was to tea at a carefully sanctioned household, was it a snobbishness and a sort of fear? After all, before we'd ended up in a one-bedroom flat with rising damp in a council estate it was all leather sofas and designer labels. I always just assumed she was very protective and clingy because of whatever had happened with her and my Dad but maybe not. I certainly remember her having a go at me if I tried to talk to or make friends with anyone on the estate, especially not the youths that used to hang around in the stairwell. Maybe they were all heroin users and I had no clue. At any rate until I started going out when I was 16 I did lead a very isolated life. Perhaps it's no wonder I'm not very good at relationships.
We got out when I was eight to a whole brand new council house, but that was only cos Mum pulled many and varied medical strings and used my asthma - which was genuinly bad cos of the metal window frames and the damp all over the walls. The other day I went to a similar one-bed flat in Greenleaf Road Walthamstow, for a story, where a couple and their two young kids were living. Both kids had bad asthma and the old metal 60s windows were probably to blame. Going back to that and seeing how they lived and hearing the kids wheezing really depressed me, 25 years later and those shit frames are still there.
The documentary did confirm my worst suspicions tho, of the way Alice seemed to have been taught that private school kids were superior to state school kids and that rich people deserved their privilege because they weren't lazy benefit scroungers like poor people are.
I say taught because once she meets poor kid Natalie and mixes with some other kids in a drama group she quickly becomes embarassed by her previous announcements.
And I say suspicions because that's how the private school kids at university came across to me, when I first came across them and before we'd all mixed and became more like each other. Obviously there's prejudice on both sides and not all private schools are Eton but when you consider that a majority of our companies and institutions are run by people who've been to private school, and they are notoriously difficult to get into a lot of the time (just look at the BBC) it's quite scary if Alice's attitude is in any way representative of what happens to your kid if you pay for their education.
So I wonder, those of you who have been through that, are you taught to feel superior? Or are we just taught to have low expectations? Baroness Scotland, who's from Walthamstow, and is now Attorney General was told by her state school careers advisor she should focus on a job in a supermarket when she said she wanted to be a lawyer. Things have moved on, but I'm not sure how much.
I always used to wonder about that whenever I went to visit Debz, those mentalist mansions right next to the estates. Although some were offices and many were split up for flats some were proper homes. One of the most telling aspects of the doc was how rich girl Alice had been brought up never to turn left out of her house because that way lay the estate, danger and dodgy people, according to her family. But once she went there it didn't take her long to change her perceptions.
Now it's just occured to me to wonder if that was part of the reason my Mum never let me out when I was a kid, unless it was to tea at a carefully sanctioned household, was it a snobbishness and a sort of fear? After all, before we'd ended up in a one-bedroom flat with rising damp in a council estate it was all leather sofas and designer labels. I always just assumed she was very protective and clingy because of whatever had happened with her and my Dad but maybe not. I certainly remember her having a go at me if I tried to talk to or make friends with anyone on the estate, especially not the youths that used to hang around in the stairwell. Maybe they were all heroin users and I had no clue. At any rate until I started going out when I was 16 I did lead a very isolated life. Perhaps it's no wonder I'm not very good at relationships.
We got out when I was eight to a whole brand new council house, but that was only cos Mum pulled many and varied medical strings and used my asthma - which was genuinly bad cos of the metal window frames and the damp all over the walls. The other day I went to a similar one-bed flat in Greenleaf Road Walthamstow, for a story, where a couple and their two young kids were living. Both kids had bad asthma and the old metal 60s windows were probably to blame. Going back to that and seeing how they lived and hearing the kids wheezing really depressed me, 25 years later and those shit frames are still there.
The documentary did confirm my worst suspicions tho, of the way Alice seemed to have been taught that private school kids were superior to state school kids and that rich people deserved their privilege because they weren't lazy benefit scroungers like poor people are.
I say taught because once she meets poor kid Natalie and mixes with some other kids in a drama group she quickly becomes embarassed by her previous announcements.
And I say suspicions because that's how the private school kids at university came across to me, when I first came across them and before we'd all mixed and became more like each other. Obviously there's prejudice on both sides and not all private schools are Eton but when you consider that a majority of our companies and institutions are run by people who've been to private school, and they are notoriously difficult to get into a lot of the time (just look at the BBC) it's quite scary if Alice's attitude is in any way representative of what happens to your kid if you pay for their education.
So I wonder, those of you who have been through that, are you taught to feel superior? Or are we just taught to have low expectations? Baroness Scotland, who's from Walthamstow, and is now Attorney General was told by her state school careers advisor she should focus on a job in a supermarket when she said she wanted to be a lawyer. Things have moved on, but I'm not sure how much.