Brin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
brin_bellway) wrote2020-06-01 09:26 pm
brin_bellway) wrote2020-06-01 09:26 pm
(no subject)
[cw: (arguably) poverty, abstract discussion of classism]
[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (bysiderea)
Given the whole upward-mobility college-as-acculturation thing, I feel like there's something interestingly relevant about "Mom [raised blue-collar, first-generation university graduate, married into the culture of a higher-class man she met there] excitedly† telling her brother about how the Canadian tertiary education system has much more of a practical focus than the American one, with far fewer gen-ed requirements and far greater employer willingness to hire people with one- or two-year diplomas rather than a full bachelor's: she's very pleased to see her children pursuing bright futures that *don't* involve four-year degrees".
(Brother has a one-year culinary diploma and is pursuing a career as a chef, which is to say blue-collar but in a well-off way. I am pursuing the extremely paternal-side traditional career of accounting, but not in a way that involves a four-year degree (at least not right away; *might* be useful enough to be worth getting later on, but you don't need one just to start the way you apparently do in America††).)
I wonder how upwardly-mobile Canadians go about acculturating. (For the sake of curiosity, not personal need. Given my upbringing, I expect I already have a good enough class culture to be getting on with.)
---
And regarding this post linked within: is it just me, or does *every single one* of these cultures sound like an unpleasant place to live?
They all value the wrong things! Like "hard work", or "social influence", or "torture of peasants". In which culture is the ideal lifestyle "minor rentier who volunteers two days a week†††, spends the other five pursuing her hobbies and personal projects (with no particular expectation that these need be *creative* projects), and wastes exactly zero (0) dollars *signalling* that she is independently wealthy because it's enough simply to *be* independently wealthy (also that money could have gone towards supporting a cause you actually care about)"?
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†Not sure this is quite the right word. Happily? Proudly? Patriotically?
††Remember that time an American accountant told me one of the reasons they became an accountant was that you *only* needed a bachelor's to get a job? And that even *that* is less true than it used to be?
†††"Volunteer" here covers both "direct volunteer work" and "paid work, but you donate your entire take-home pay to charity".
[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (by
siderea)Given the whole upward-mobility college-as-acculturation thing, I feel like there's something interestingly relevant about "Mom [raised blue-collar, first-generation university graduate, married into the culture of a higher-class man she met there] excitedly† telling her brother about how the Canadian tertiary education system has much more of a practical focus than the American one, with far fewer gen-ed requirements and far greater employer willingness to hire people with one- or two-year diplomas rather than a full bachelor's: she's very pleased to see her children pursuing bright futures that *don't* involve four-year degrees".
(Brother has a one-year culinary diploma and is pursuing a career as a chef, which is to say blue-collar but in a well-off way. I am pursuing the extremely paternal-side traditional career of accounting, but not in a way that involves a four-year degree (at least not right away; *might* be useful enough to be worth getting later on, but you don't need one just to start the way you apparently do in America††).)
I wonder how upwardly-mobile Canadians go about acculturating. (For the sake of curiosity, not personal need. Given my upbringing, I expect I already have a good enough class culture to be getting on with.)
---
And regarding this post linked within: is it just me, or does *every single one* of these cultures sound like an unpleasant place to live?
They all value the wrong things! Like "hard work", or "social influence", or "torture of peasants". In which culture is the ideal lifestyle "minor rentier who volunteers two days a week†††, spends the other five pursuing her hobbies and personal projects (with no particular expectation that these need be *creative* projects), and wastes exactly zero (0) dollars *signalling* that she is independently wealthy because it's enough simply to *be* independently wealthy (also that money could have gone towards supporting a cause you actually care about)"?
---
†Not sure this is quite the right word. Happily? Proudly? Patriotically?
††Remember that time an American accountant told me one of the reasons they became an accountant was that you *only* needed a bachelor's to get a job? And that even *that* is less true than it used to be?
†††"Volunteer" here covers both "direct volunteer work" and "paid work, but you donate your entire take-home pay to charity".