Blog 2- Socioeconomic Inequalities & Political Engagement

Why working class are less politically engaged?

 Let’s face it- we all know that being placed in different social classes means that we are going to face different experiences within our lives and that includes being politically engaged. Let’s define social class first:  Social class refers ‘to the horizontal stratification of a population’ and it ‘designate differences based on wealth, income, occupation, status, group identification, level of consumption and family background.’ (Gordon, 1949: 262). These are the main factors as to why people are placed in different social classes, which will be looked at further in the blog.

Before we dig in anymore further in political engagement and social class, let’s focus on education. Education and social class come hand in hand. Education teaches individuals from different social classes for different purpose within the society. Although, doesn’t it seem unfair that people from social classes are taught differently in preparing to working in real world? As stipulated by Reay (cited in Ferguson, 2017), she looked at the injustice that students from working class experienced, in her words she explained ‘Even within a comprehensive school, when they’re all in the same building, the working classes are still getting less education than the middle classes’. (Ferguson, 2017). Why is it that students from working class background are getting are less educated than others classes ? Write your thoughts in the comments!

One of the main reason is because the social classes that individuals find themselves in- it’s true, not everyone have the same opportunity as everyone else! Some parents have the opportunity to pass down knowledge to their children and some parents unfortunately don’t. There has been an increase rate of disadvantaged people who are unable to go out to vote (Ipsos MORIS, 2017). This means that they are feeling isolated from the rest of the society as they are unable to express their voices to others as governments are failing to meet their needs. Below shows the graph of the voting result among social class within General Election held between 2015 and 2017.

So, what do we see here from the graph above? The classification ‘AB’ links to voters who have intermediate or higher managerial, administrative, or professional role, whilst the classification ‘DE’ links to the voters who are semi or unskilled manual workers, as well as the unemployed (Ipsos MORI, 2009). This clearly shows that there is a gap between these two groups when it came to voting in the General Election and the EU Referendum. This shows that people from classification ‘DE’ have less chances for their voices are going to be heard and will matter. So how can we ensure that working class background voices are being heard?

The importance of having citizenship education- a solution to our problem?

Let’s see if the question raised above can answer our question. In 2002, citizenship education became a compulsory subject to be taught as a national curriculum for students aged 11-16 (Weinberg & Flinders, 2018:573). This enabled students across England to build up their political knowledge and to overcome the democratic apathy that individuals experience. Having citizenship education to be taught in schools can allow students to become politically active. This can allow students to gain the basic knowledge of what it is to be an active citizen, they can promote and fight for what they believe what is right and just for the society. This can prove that citizenship education has the ability to ensure that citizen of the society from across all the social class have the power to speak up, share their voices and taking part in activities to make them politically engaged. Going back to our question, this proves that having citizenship education can help solve the problem. What other factors can influence youth? Read on below….

Alongside with citizenship education, family influences can also affect if young people are politically engaged or not. In a research carried out by Muddiman (2019), he has found those young people whose grandparents who are politically active, have a huge influence on their grandchildren ‘Politically pro-active grandparents seem to be even more influential – young people with politically pro-active grandparents were eight times more likely to be proactive themselves (compared to those with non-proactive grandparents.’ This confirms my point that youth coming from politically active family are more likely to get themselves involve as well.

Any other recommendation to improve youth’s participation?

There are PLENTY! Citizenship education needs to be taught at an earlier age, and by that I mean individuals should learn about how UK political system work at an earlier age using available resources such as: news discussions and showing students things that are happening which directly affects them- young people need to see how they fit with society before they become alienated. To increase knowledge for individuals coming from low socioeconomic background, teachers should provide their parents information sheets on political issues and why it is important, which would later build on when they teach their children to improve their knowledge and use it in school.

Your turn! Comment down below what recommendations would you give to schools to teach students from low socio-economic background?

References:

Ferguson, D., 2017. ‘Working-class children get less of everything in education – including respect’. [online] the Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/nov/21/english-class-system-shaped-in-schools> [Accessed 9 March 2021].

Gordon, M., 1949. Social Class in American Sociology. American Journal of Sociology, 55(3), p.262.

Ipsos.com. 2009. Social Grade: A Classification Tool Bite Sized Thought Piece. [online] Available at: <https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/publication/6800-03/MediaCT_thoughtpiece_Social_Grade_July09_V3_WEB.pdf> [Accessed 9 March 2021].

Ipsos.com. 2017. How the voters voted in the 2017 election. [online] Available at: <https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/2017-06/how-britain-voted-in-the-2017-election_2.pdf> [Accessed 10 March 2021].

Muddiman, D., 2019. The generation game: does family shape young people’s political engagement? | UK in a changing Europe. [online] UK in a changing Europe. Available at: <https://ukandeu.ac.uk/the-generation-game-does-family-shape-young-peoples-political-engagement/> [Accessed 9 March 2021].

Weinberg, J. and Flinders, M., 2018. Learning for democracy: The politics and practice of citizenship education. British Educational Research Journal, 44(4), p.573.