Social Class Distinctions as a Function of Language Skills, by Eldon New,Telicom, Sep 1999, Vol XII no. 35
I present here some operational definitions of classes based on language skills and parenting behavior.
Because of the Marxist use of class terminology, a period of time went by in which our society pretended that there was no such thing as class.
In order to understand changes now occurring in our culture, it might be usefull to consider definitions of class which do not rely heavily on economic status.
Before World War One, in Europe, it was acceptable to describe one's occupation as gentleman. After the war it was not. Similar changes have been occurring for decades that changed the way we percieve classes.
Upper Class:
uses logical arguments in discussions with children encourages writing a pastime, non-violence taught and discussed, writing for pleasure is encouraged [1]
Upper Middle Class:
speaks in paragraphs to children reading is a pastime, reads aloud to children teaches civic virtue and tolerance[2]
Lower Middle Class:
speaks in complete sentences to children some light reading at home, magazines and newspapers teaches dogma and intolerance of others[3]
Lower Class:
speaks in sentence fragments to children no reading for pleasure, ,TV on continuosly, children communicate by hitting, racism taught to children, weapons are purchased for the children to play with [4]
Under-Class:
Speaks in single words to children no reading at home, children encouraged to hit each other weapons are purchased for the children to play with [5]
Criminal class:
strikes children and grunts at them encourages children to play in the street.
[Some of the categories are exaggerated, it is left up to the reader to determine which.]
The use of economic and employment related concepts to define class has drawn criticism lately in the academic sociology journals.
Diane Reay says;
"Drawing on data from a qualitative study of mother's involvement in their children's education, I illustrate how class remains an integral part of mothers' subjectivitites and continues to powerfully influence their actions and attitudes. I argue through my data that, regardless of whether we see ourselves in class terms, class just as much as race, gender, age and sexuality shapes, and goes on shaping, the individuals we are, and the individuals we become. I conclude that we need to rethink social class as a dynamic mobile aspect of identity that continues to permeate daily interaction despite its marginalisation in prevailing contemporary discourses." (from Sociology, Vol 32, No. 2, May 1998, entitled Rethinking Social Class; Qualitative Perspectives on Class and Gender, by Diane Reay)
There are several aothors in the field of sociology who feel that economic status is not the best definition of class:
From Rethinking Social Class:
"On the evidence of critics of the conventional approach it appears that , over and above the technical problems endemic in conventional classificatory systems, simple categorization based on male labour market participation overlooks the complexity inherent in the relationship between gender and social class." [Reay]
My mother did some field work in the sixties and seventies that started me thinking along these lines. She wanted to find out why some of her young students could not do the calsswork in elementary school. She discovered after visiting the children at home that the parents were not in the practice of speaking to the children in complete sentences.
It is possible by using definitions like this one for classes, and by considering academic values, Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive skills, civic values, scientific and mathematical laws to come up with a set of shared values between most cultures. This can act as the social glue which will hold together the new multicultural, and postindustrial civilization.
His Holiness The Dalai Lama of Tibet has suggested such a set of shared cultural values in a lecture in Boulder (1997).
If we want a multicultural society that preserves cultural diferences, we must search for a set of unifying values that do not deny the ideals of the various cultures that will be included in the future society.
There is an organizatrion to study the global systems of developing economic and social networks:
Due to pressures generated through increasing economic globalization, linked to demands associated with the quest for legitimacy on the part of democratic governments, we foresee, following a period of increased economic competition, the convergence of social practices around a single societal model. The Journal of World-Systems Research
William Bateson concluded in 1918:
"If posterity takes any interest in history,...they will observe that the unusual feature of the Victorian epoch was not the exceptional distinction of the notables it produced,... but the truly extraordinary circumstance that at that time intellectual distinction was held in public estimation as a thing of great worth. " pg 72, Gregory Bateson, The Legacy of a Scientist, by David LipsetJefferson and Franklin did not risk their lives for a Stalin-like classless society, but for the right of individuals to have class mobility.
Mark Gilley submits this quote: "As I learned more words, I made the discovery that having more words allowed me to think more clearly and precisely. So I discovered that violence and throwing things around do not improve any situation. I also found out that many errors by others were simply the results of the fuzziness that comes with an inadequate vocabulary." --paraphrased from A Northern Irish Playwright.
Call for New Values, By Mikail Gorbachev
"We should take a sober and unprejudiced view of the strengths and weaknesses of collectivism, which is fraught with dictatorship. But what about the individualism of Western culture? At the very least, something will have to be done about its purely consumerist orientation that emphasizes "having" rather than "being", acquiring and possessing rather than revealing the real potential of humanity. ""Today, humankind is facing a choice. It is time for every individual, nation and state to rethink its place and role in world affairs. We need an intellectual breakthrough into a new dimension. And that means that the state of the human spirit assumes paramount importance. The roles of culture, religion, science, and education must grow enormously. The responsibility of the centers of humanity's intellectual, scientific, and religious development is immense and must be given preeminence. " Call For New Values.Mikhail Gorbachev."Periods of history when values undergo a fundamental shift are certainly not unprecedented. This happened in the Hellenistic period, when from the ruins of the classical world the Middle Ages were gradually born. It happened during the Renaissance, which opened the way to the modern era. The distinguishing features of such transitional periods are a mixing and blending of cultures and a plurality or parallelism of intellectual and spiritual worlds. These are periods when all consistent value systems collapse, when cultures distant in time and space are discovered or rediscovered. They are periods when there is a tendency to quote, to imitate, and to amplify, rather than to state with authority or integrate. New meaning is gradually born from the encounter, or the intersection, of many different elements." The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern WorldVaclav HavelClassism: Millionaires in the Cabinet.
following is a quote from: "How Core American Values Influence Class Prejudice in Welfare Reform Programs" by Charles Levy
Both racism and classism are in a paradoxical position to cherished American core values, as well as reinforced by these values. The assumption is that society is truly equal in opportunities for wealth, education, and occupation, and all Americans have to do is show some effort and they will succeed. Yet, a consistent pattern of discrimination has existed in the United States, denying people these opportunities to succeed based not only on traditional race and sex characteristics, but on social class as well. The lower class has been consistently discriminated against based on the perception that people in the lower class are not economically or educationally successful in a society with equal opportunity for advancement due to a lack of individual effort. One of the most overt manifestations of these prejudicial attitudes toward the lower class is through social policy in the United States.For twenty-five years the Republican Administrations of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush, as well as the current GOP leadership in Congress has targeted social policies aimed at welfare, in order to lower taxes and balance the budget. The rhetoric behind this "welfare reform" is that every American take responsibility for their own actions because no one gets a free ride in this nation. Only through hard work and perseverance can Americans achieve in a country in which everyone has an equal chance to get ahead. These welfare reform policies have the purpose of cutting as much funding as possible to programs that aid the poor, e.g. mothers with children born out of wedlock and the unemployed. At the same time, these reform policies seek to aid the wealthy and special interests by cutting taxes and granting federal monies with less than explicit instructions on how to use it, all in the name of revitalizing the economy. Thus, an economic agenda is advanced that benefits the upper classes and penalizes the lower classes.The most current manifestation of this policy is in the 1994 policy agenda called, Contract With America, advanced by House Speaker Newt Gingrich and the other House Republicans. Although billed as a fresh set of ideas to rejuvenate the American people and economy, there is nothing different in any of the policies when compared to those advanced by Presidents Nixon, Reagan, and Bush in the past. The major policies proposed are a cut to illegitimacy programs, increased job training and stipulations that recipients must be working to receive benefits, capital gains tax cuts benefiting the wealthy, and block grants.This thesis is an attempt to formulate only in its most basic form: 1) the concept of class prejudice; 2) the American ideology of core values that created and ultimately maintains class prejudice, and; 3) the effect class prejudice has on social policy in the United States. The three general hypotheses in this research regarding classism are: 1) If people hold the three core American values of individualism, equality of opportunity and hard work, they are more likely to be class prejudiced; 2) The more people hold prejudicial attitudes toward the lower classes the more class prejudiced they are; 3) the more people believe in classism, the more likely they are to support policy in the United States that perpetuates penalizes the lower class, thus perpetuating negative attitudes.... This scapegoating or blaming of the victim only hides the more serious issue of a widening gap between the upper and lower classes that includes all races and both sexes. This work is not only important so that Americans can come terms with admitting that there are actual economic class-based explanations for poverty based on core American values, but that it is time to bring class back in as an important explanation of how and why social policy continues to perpetuate prejudice of the lower class.[more of the paper is on this link:]
C. Levy, Papers this web page
http://www.oocities.org/Athens/Acropolis/2606/class.htm
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