The NYT is doing a whole spread on class in America, and it has really got me thinking. According to their calculator, I’m in the 63rd percentile overall, currently. I was surprised at how much education factored in, and just how high even a Master’s degree would put me. Odd.
It also has me thinking about the different schools that one can go to. We do several graduations, and our best school is a private liberal arts college that costs about 40k a year to go to. Number one client, easily. Our next best schools, though, are the community (formerly called technical) colleges. Our biggest order ever came from a student who got a degree in working on power lines. Behind those fall the state universities and larger, less exclusive private schools.
At the liberal arts college, I am always a little. . . . I don’t think envious is the word, but I’m something. I look at these kids (and more and more, they seem like Kids to me, but hey, I’m a month and a few days from 30 now) and think "How many of you are fully cognizant of the opportunities you have just based on the fact that you were able to attend, and graduate from, this school?" I really don’t think that some of them grasp that at all. It’s just a given for them, that they will have connections built in from their families and their classmates and their social class that will help them out along the way.
Don’t get me wrong: I love connections. I have several myself, and as I’ve said, that’s why I’m going to grad school, really, after my conversation with Marilyn. But, I look at the next year, and I just really hope that this works out. That my M. Ed will mean more than being near the top of the education scale on the NYT calculator. According to it, a Master’s puts me in the 97th percentile for education. Only 3 percent of Americans will be more educated than myself. That’s crazy when you look at it that way.
I grew up in a different class than my husband did. He grew up dirt poor, living in cityhousing, one parent, without even a car to get around. I grew up in a home that my (still) married parents built. We traveled, and had birthday parties and christmas presents and educational opportunities that even I didn’t appreciate until recently, until I realized that it’s not like that for a lot of people. We had books and a backyard and savings bonds from our grandparents on our birthdays. Dave never even had a grandparent.
And while my family might be middle class for the nation, for our area, we were solidly upper class. I got my clothes at JCPenney, which was more than most kids ever got. I never ever worried about my parents not being able to provide for me, or worried about my living conditions changing, or anything. I worried about how to rearrange my bedroom and passing my driver’s test so I could drive the truck to school instead of taking the bus. Dave never got his license until he was 19, and he had to buy an old VW Golf first, to take the test with.
But then, in the scope of my extended family, we’re at the bottom of the ladder. There is great wealth in the periphery of my family, which I was exposed to and aware of at a very young age. I remember riding in the glass elevator of my great-aunt’s home when I was 5, wondering why WE couldn’t have something so cool. In my extended family, there are/were professional athletes, oil company execs, engineers, doctors, and self-made successful businessmen. Dave never even ate in restaurants when he was a kid.
In the world of class, I feel really odd. I sure as hell don’t make much money as a teacher, and will make less as a grad student, but I hope that I make more on the other end. But, in the context of the world, I make a LOT. One of my earliest lessons in teaching was when I made a generic, off the cuff remark about being "a poor teacher." People in my circles understand those jokes, and make them themselves, it’s a standard line. But I said it in front of a kid, who said "What do you mean? You’re not poor, you’re a TEACHER." The kid lives in a 2 bedroom apartment with his brother and mom and stepdad. He doesn’t have what I do. To him, I’m rich. To others, they can’t understand how I live on my salary. To Dave’s family, I’m rich. To mine, I’m poor.
One of the basic tenets of my life is that "You don’t need money to have class." I truly believe that. I have known some classy poor people in my day. Manners count for much more than money to me. The way people treat others counts more than how much you can donate to charity. I would talk to one kind and generous lineman over a wealthy and entitled private school graduate, any day.
I don’t even know where this is going, my thoughts on it are so complex. My biggest asset, according to the NYT, is my education. Even without a Master’s, I’m in the top 5th. I don’t know how that will translate to my income in a year or two, but I hope there is some correlation. For, while I know how to make a teaching salary work, I would love to have some of the freedoms of a higher income. But, for me, a reasonable income would be 40-50k, while, for others, that is peanuts.
What do you think about class?
Oh, man, class. It’s hard to untangle my thoughts on it. I feel like I’m making an insane amount of money, but it’s a lot less than what a few of my friends complain about making, and a lot more than what other friends are happy to have achieved. I own a (mortgage on) a house, we have a car, we can pay our bills and travel once or twice a year, and we don’t have to worry about whether we can eat in restaurants this month at all or which bills to pay and which can be put off yet another cycle. To me, that means I’m doing well.
I guess the thing that surprises me about people is where their standards are. A friend who grew up dirt-poor in Maine has one of the highest standards of living of anyone I know: you know, fancy car, nice glassware, well-decorated spotless house with new furniture, etc. And she expects that of her life, that’s what she wants. I grew up reasonably well-off — my parents were in debt, but not crazy debt, and we had a camp and I had a car in high school, etc. — and I think nearly all of our furniture is hand-me-downs and I *just don’t care*. I like it this way.
In college, I was amazed at how many people didn’t have to hold down jobs while going to school. It had seemed like a given to me.
Anyway, at the base, I agree with you — you DON’T have to have money to have class. My wealthier friend above has lots of it, but so does my public-health-policy harpist friend who probably makes half what I do. Courtesy, respect, and sharpness (not education) are what I respect in a person. I’m sad whenever I realize that a huge chunk of the world respects money and power more than those things.
That’s an interesting question. Growing up in suburban Boston, we barely got by. If we lived most anywhere else in the country, it would be sufficient. But I was really lucky; my parents got the house before the real estate market started inflating. Regardless of the money situation, we always acted like a middle class family, but I was very aware of the difference between me and my friends. It probably says something that my best friend is an immigrant’s daughter, also not one of the spendthrift type.
It was really hard for me going to Brown. My freshman roommate was a doctor’s daughter, just didn’t understand not having enough $$ to do something. Only a third of my class was even on financial aid and I felt very much like a have-not a lot of the time I was there.
It’s been interesting talking about money with the guy I’m most likely going to marry. He’s from a solidly middle class family, never had to worry about money, but never spent it on things they didn’t need, either. I figured out this weekend that he views money as something to be saved, while I see it as something to be spent, a means to an end. It’s interesting to see how our different experiences influenced our views.
Then there was my friend in college whose dad owned a skyscraper in Providence. Money was completely meaningless to him, so he was just extremely generous, because, why not?
But, you know, Britney will never have class regardless of how much money she has.
Great food for thought. I’m going to have to think on this one.
I grew up dirt poor, until about junior high, when we were still poor, but not quite as badly. The kids in my classes mostly didn’t know what it was like to worry about having enough. On more than one occasion we had to make do with what was growing in the garden, and skip buying milk for a week or two altogether — that kind of scene. But here’s an interesting fact: if you live in the area of Southern California that I grew up and currently live in, you are economically within the TOP THREE PERCENT WORLDWIDE. This blew my mind. H and I are not rich by any means, and every day at my job reminds me of this, where because I’m a contracted employee, even my boss doesn’t know how comparatively little I make (and she has on at least one occasion spoken derisively of people based on their hourly wage… which was actually higher than mine is!). It’s all relative. My fantasy is to own a big turn-of-the-century house somewhere and get to be a SAHM; my reality is that I own a condo in a fairly exclusive (especially now, with the absurd ever-increasing real estate values) area near the ocean, and I will not be able to stop working. We can’t make on just one salary. On the other hand, I have an incredible relationship with an amazing man, and every day when I get through the door I’m overcome with joy and relief and a little bit of disbelief, that I could have a life this wonderful. Cash or class? I’ll take the class, thanks.
I just got back from an affordable healthcare rally, so now I’ve got all that roiling through my head, too. I just wrote a sizable post about it, so I won’t go into it too much here, but it seems these days, even some middle class families can’t afford health insurance. And that affects everything.
I grew up in one of the wealthiest towns in America. And my family is very well off. We had five cars and a four car garage, a winter home in Florida and a summer home in Massachussets. I never had to worry about money. Ever. But you probably wouldn’t know it if you met me. And it isn’t because I hide it. And it isn’t because I reject my family’s wealth. It’s because I don’t care that my parents made a lot of money and have in turn had a very nice life. It’s not my money. I don’t look at it as something I have earned. It is those that feel entitled (of the wealthy) that show the least class. Class to me is not what you have but who you are and what you want to be. It is passion and the ability to see that the world may not see from the same eyes as you. Class isn’t money or education or lineage. Class is what YOU bring the to world, what you are willing to offer of yourself. I think the most important thing my parents did when I was a kid was put me in a day care with all of the rest of the kids…kids that I never would have met otherwise. As my mom says, “Keep your eyes open to the world”. She is the classiest woman I know.
The New York Times has an interesting series on class at the moment: http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/class/index.html?hp