Classless Society Essay

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http://www.theage.com.au/ http://www.theage.com.au/national/whatever-happened-to-the-classless-society-20090815-elt2.html Whatever happened to the classless society? THORNTON MCCAMISH August 16, 2009 We like to think of ourselves as above class but inequality is well-developed in Australia and it's costing us all dearly. IF AUSTRALIA truly is a classless society, then someone forgot to tell Ja'mie King, star of the ABC TV mockumentary Summer Heights High. Inserted into an ordinary public high school for a semester, Ja'mie, ''the smartest non-Asian'' at Hilford Girls' College, finds herself in a blazerless wasteland. ''At public schools, the girls are skanks,'' she notes with dismay. But she's not unsympathetic. The problem is that parents of state school kids just don't care enough about their kids to send them to good private schools. This neglect of ''povvo'' children by their ''povvo'' parents forms a ''cycle of skankiness that I am so glad I am not a part of''. She doesn't use the word ''class'' much, but then Australians generally don't, now less than ever. Class politics grates against the egalitarian idea we have of ourselves. And that others, apparently, have of us too. Reflecting on the differences between the countries battling for the Ashes this winter, English sportswriter Simon Barnes wrote: ''If you think social snobberies are a thing of the past in Britain, then go to Australia and understand how class penetrates every aspect of English life. In Australia, you can be free, not from your social class, but from the feeling that it matters.'' We do like to think of ourselves as above class. And there's something glorious about the way Australians treat the outward trappings of class as a joke. At the spring racing carnival, all kinds of people come to play the toff in hired suits and muddy stilettos. A hundred times a day during the

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