Class and looks

As I walked to the gym the other day, I happened to pass kids coming out of schools. And one thing leapt out at me - public school students look different from state school ones. So much so that, if you put a random group of teenagers from both in front of me dressed similarly, I’d be confident of telling them apart.
There are three differences:
1. Public school kids are thinner. I mean thinner, not less obese. There’s more chance of them being stick-thin than their state school counterparts.
2. Public school boys are taller. They are also hairier. There’s such a thing as public school hair; Nick Clegg, David Cameron (when a little younger), Boris Johnson and his ex-deputy Tim Parker all have it.
3. Public school girls are blonder and prettier; Oakham schoolgirls seem to be in a Diana Vickers lookalike competition.
Of course, there are tons of exceptions - I’m talking about statistical tendencies. But I’m not contrasting the upper class and chavs here: I’d guess the state school-kids parents’ incomes aren’t far from the national average.
But this worries me.
For one thing, it means class is not dead. Class differences are acutely visible.
And for another, these differences in appearance are correlated with success in later life. There’s lots of evidence that height and good looks lead to academic success and higher earnings.
Which in turn suggests that even in the vanishingly unlikely event of equalizing resources between schools, people from richer backgrounds would still have considerable advantages. Equality of opportunity is, surely, an impossible ideal.

Comments

[kardinalbirkutzki]

You are absolutely barking mad. You think public school kids are better looking than state school kids? Let me repeat that: do you really suggest a serious discussion about the relative attractiveness of state versus public sector school pupils? Yeah, right, and I am a Dutchman with ten testicles!

[jerk]

Hey, I'll do you...

[Bob B]

A few years back, Warwick uni turned up with interesting research findings on degree classes of university students who had attended fee-paying schools and their degree classes on graduation:

"The UK's most expensive private schools are producing pupils who achieve the worst grades at university, according to research. An eight-year study of graduates' results by researchers at the University of Warwick suggests that the more parents pay in school fees, the less chance their children have of getting a good degree."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/2552523.stm

That could connect with the fact that the two maintained (meaning non-fee-paying) selective schools within walking distance of where I sit achieve better A-level results than Eton.

For interest, this is the latest schools league table based on A-level results:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7827223.stm

[shrimplate]

I did not realize that "Birkutzki" was a Dutch name.

[dearieme]

"class is not dead": not while Dillow C. is still breathing.

[XN]

Way to go, commenters! Increase social mobility by banning all mention of class! That's bound to work.

[Peter]

Agreed on all counts Chris. I really notice the difference between my home town (near Liverpool) and Oxford, especially in terms of the relative thin-ness.

[Patrick]

The 'posh totty' theorem. Works for me! Chav diet = Doritos in Stella sauce. Posh diet = coq au vin with polenta. Any wonder that there is a class tendency towards fatslagdom?

[kinglear]

Ah joy, gratuitous picture of female with a protruding front.
But I agree with what you say. Ignore exam results - being taller, thinner, better looking etc gives you an advantage over the weedy swot every time. And you certainly are much more at ease with other people, which is probably what really matters for success anyway.

[Tom Addison]

I'd agree with what you're saying, at Uni I would probably have guessed correctly most of the time which kids went to private school and which didn't, at least white ones anyway. And when it comes to identifying chavs, you can spot those knuckle draggers from a mile off.

Regarding future success, I think it is true a lot of private school kids under perform compare to state kids at Uni (at least compared to what you'd expect anyway), but because Daddy has so many friends some achieve great success anyway.

[James Hamilton]

It's interesting to see where Chris thinks the "privileged" subset is. Consider for a minute that he had exactly the same education as Oliver Kamm - same schools, same university apparently. But which one - Chris or Oliver - would you define as "public school"?

Then compare Chris's life chances with someone new to the UK, of an ethnic minority, little or no English. Is he entitled to regard Chris as one of the elite who have things their own way?

[Jarvis]

I think the difference is down to genes, spending power and taste.

genes - rich men do better in the dating game. "So what first attracted you to the millionaire paul daniels?"

spending power - there's the well documented differences in diet but also in grooming. See Mrs. Cole's sister the lovely Gillian Tweedy http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1084308/Revealed-The-X-rated-family-Cheryl-Cole-left-behind.html

taste/peer effects - as Bartes and Bourdieu show the kind of style the educated people who read this blog value is the kind exhibited, in the main, by (medium) posh kids. Whereas chavs ahve their own status symbols and, similarly, wouldn't be seen dead with Miss Vickers tastefully touseld hair.

[Bob B]

"Regarding future success, I think it is true a lot of private school kids under perform compare to state kids at Uni (at least compared to what you'd expect anyway), but because Daddy has so many friends some achieve great success anyway."

Arguably, even more career success is achieved not because of degree class but because of all those valuable personal contacts for social and job networking later in life made at Oxbridge but much less so at other unis.

[ad]

"Correlated with" does not mean "cause".

To quote from one of those papers:

"Using four data sets from the US and the UK, we find that the height premium in adult earnings can be explained by childhood scores on cognitive tests."

[anotherplanet]

Ah yes, as the great philosopher Jean-Jacques Burnel raged: "It's only the children of the fucking wealthy who tend to be good looking."
(source:Ugly,Rattus Norvegicus)

[anotherplanet]

Ah yes, as the great philosopher Jean-Jacques Burnel raged: "It's only the children of the fucking wealthy who tend to be good looking."
(source:Ugly,Rattus Norvegicus)

[Nick]

Aha, but what about Jews! We are short, sometimes fat, and don't have a widespread advantage in good looks - but we do ok. I am sure that can't all be down to genetic endowment either, so I say there is still plenty to play for in the social mobility stakes, regardless of looks.

[chris]

James - no-one would define me or Mr Kamm as "public school", as we went to a state grammar in the days when the 11-plus existed.
And I've always admitted that as a white Englishman I am one of the most privileged people ever to walk the earth.

[Ken Houghton]

Should we assume that is Ms. Vickers's picture? Looks a bit like Steve Martin's ex-wife--or a Kristen Bell publicity shot, in a few years.

And the "great" thing about your observation (besides that anyone who paid attention could have told you that long ago; must be getting away from London) is that discrimination on the basis of class is easy to maintain.

[Andrew Duffin]

It really isn't that hard.

Richer people tend be able compete better for the better-looking partners (women like money and power, remember?), and simple genetics then suggests their kids will be better-looking too.

It reinforces over the generations unless inbreeding causes the whole scheme to collapse in imbecility - which has sometimes happened. But if the gene pool is big enough - and in the British Upper Middle class, it probably is - then the result you have noticed is pretty much inevitable.

Let's have more pictures of pretty young girls anyway, it livens up Broon's Britain a little.

[rolex gmt]

And a lot of it reflects a switch from bank deposits to securities; foreigners “other investments” in the UK, http://www.watchgy.com/ mostly bank deposits, fell by £143.2bn in Q1. And of course there’s no guarantee such buying will continue.
http://www.watchgy.com/tag-heuer-c-24.html
http://www.watchgy.com/rolex-submariner-c-8.html