From ptrourke@mediaone.net Sun Dec 31 08:53:02 2000 Received: from mxu3.u.washington.edu (mxu3.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.7]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW00.12) with ESMTP id IAA55014 for ; Sun, 31 Dec 2000 08:53:02 -0800 Received: from chmls06.mediaone.net (chmls06.mediaone.net [24.147.1.144]) by mxu3.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id IAA26292 for ; Sun, 31 Dec 2000 08:53:01 -0800 Received: from patricktrourke (h00500480cb85.ne.mediaone.net [24.147.80.93]) by chmls06.mediaone.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id LAA11075 for ; Sun, 31 Dec 2000 11:52:59 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <001701c0734a$00fe16c0$5d509318@ne.mediaone.net> From: "Patrick T. Rourke" To: Subject: Classics and the Working Class Date: Sun, 31 Dec 2000 11:52:00 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 The point of my question, of course, was that we do not need to justify the classical humanities to the middle and upper classes alone (i.e., "white collar" workers or small business owners, and major stockholders and those who can take Wednesday off for golf, respectively), but also to the working class (folks who work up a sweat for a living working for someone else, regardless of the fact that the unions (bless their hearts!)* have temporarily gained some of them greater financial security than many of those in the white collar class). As Elizabeth and Diana have pointed out, reaching out to the folks who live in the ungentrifying city neighborhoods is not a lost cause. In a consumer oriented culture, it's hard to point out that money, after all, is nothing more than a means to the end of improving one's quality of life; and that the depth of understanding of life's experiences that comes with a long familiarity with literature is also an improvement to one's quality of life. But folks who have the minds and the souls (there's no better term, I'm afraid) to listen and accept are to be found everywhere, pushing mops, driving taxis, and working steel as well as sitting in office complexes shuffling papers. Steve feels it necessary to prove to us that there is no working class: > What qualifies for working class? Is the guy who drives our local > garbage truck a worker despite his very large salary? Is the > electrician across the street who works at a local electric shop and > lives in a very nice lower middle class home the real thing? "A very nice lower middle class home." You see, in the US, there is nothing lower than the lower middle class; and all the children are above average. Sorry, Steve, but you set yourself up with that one. > How > about the farmers up the Willamette Valley? We still have family > farms of about 800-1,000 acres and the owners are all pretty wealthy. Does everyone working on a farm in Willamette Valley own the farm? Does everyone in the US working on a farm on the farm? The "working class" are the folks who work for the facilities departments and housekeeping departments of the local hospitals and universities, make barely more than minimum wage (if more), and yet still save enough to send their kids to the state university because they want them to have a better life than they've had. As a grad student, that pretty much described most of my students' parents, as most of my students came from Roxbury and Dorchester, those bastions of the Boston Brahmin elite. And these parents deserve at least the same amount of respect, consideration, and deference as the "middle class" and "upper class" parents do. I think Steve will agree with me on that. And I think he'll agree, too, that it's vitally important to determine how to communicate to these parents the fact that a knowledge of literature, philosophy, and history will help lead their children to a better life than they've had. These people cannot be defined by how big a house they own - they rent the second story of a tenement (and now they don't even have rent control to help them). They cannot be defined by what country club they play golf in - they play basketball down at the local city park. So they must be defined by what they do most: work, often at two jobs. Anyone who dismisses this as "Marxist" must have a very open idea of what Marxism is. If Steve and David do not like the term "working class" because they don't agree with socialist theory or because they feel that it denigrates the labor of the mind, then I ask them to consider, being confronted with the terms "middle class" and "upper class," what my idiomatic choices were in extending the question beyond the middle and upper classes? They were "lower class" and "working class." And I ask them, too, (neither has ever struck me as an elitist who would turn his nose up at the sweat of the brow) whether they would prefer to be a steelworker or a teacher, even if the steelworker's salary were higher? Whatever the term "working class" means, folks on the list found it convenient to use the terms "upper class" and "middle class" (as well as "lower middle class"), so they should not shy away from using "working class" (unless Steve imagines that he would not get a fist in the face for using the deliberately ambiguous "lower class" with the less well-compensated). If one were to ask me what my answer to my own question would be, it might be very much like John McMahon's. Only I'd throw in paleontologist, too. And my parents were almost baby-boomers and dead-center middle class. But go far enough back, and there are mill workers and canal diggers and probably miners to boot. This is a conversation that has been going on for a very long time. I'd suggest re-reading the opening chapters of *Jude the Obscure.* (Remember, there's no such thing as too much Thomas Hardy). Fortunately, the situation is much better here, today. PTR ptrourke@mediaone.net *I was a white-collar union steward for a short time. .