Class System

Let's make it three in a row in terms of ill-tempered posts on my part.  We've done the Commonwealth Games and World War One commemorations so far this week, so what's next on the list for a good slagging off?  I'll tell you what: school proms.  No, I'm not going to rant on about how this another example of the Americanisation of our culture, transplanting a purely US tradition into the UK.  No, my problem with school proms is the same problem that I have with office Christmas parties: I hate them.  I feel much the same way about birthday parties, weddings and other similar social gatherings, (funerals are the exception - as my late father once said: 'At least at a funeral you don't have to pretend to be enjoying yourself').  I am so glad that back in my day we weren't subjected to such things as a prom for school leavers.  The very idea of such a thing still mortifies me - being forced to mix socially with a bunch of bastards you've hated for the past six or seven years of school.  Except that I wouldn't have mixed with them as I wouldn't have attended.  Just like I've not attended countless similar social gatherings.  I don't enjoy them and they just make me feel uneasy.

But getting back to school proms specifically, from what little I know about them, (mainly gleaned from local newspaper reports of such occasions), they strike me as mainly being opportunities for all the 'popular' kids to further flaunt their popularity and their parents' affluence.  In other words, they seem to me to be yet another vehicle for reinforcing the 'natural' social order of the playground.  In this case a last opportunity for the 'popular' kids to lord it over their peers.  So, perhaps we should let them have these last little triumphs as, in my experience, they often find the worlds of work and/or higher education a rude awakening, where the old 'rules' don't necessarily apply any more.  Back in my day, these 'popular' kids were more often than not the rugby-playing good-at-sports bastards and bullies who got away with blue murder because they represented the school at sports and thereby curried favour with certain of the teachers.  However, in higher education they found that this didn't quite carry the same weight, (unless you rowed for Oxford or Cambridge - but let's face it, they're all knobs and snobs at those two institutions), and that some degree of academic ability and discipline (which they generally lacked) was more prized.  How I laughed when they dropped out. Well, that's enough bad-tempered ranting for this week.  No doubt I'll return refreshed after the weekend, with more to moan about!