Six years ago, Owen Jones’s book Chavs highlighted, carefully dissected and questioned the ways in which it had become acceptable in Britain to demonise people from working-class backgrounds and some of the attributes assumed to be associated with working-class cultures. The book was published at a height of media and populist sentiment characterising parts of the British working class as ignorant, lazy, with poor parenting skills and questionable morals.
Our recent review of early childhood research in the UK from 2003-2017, presented at the British Educational Research Association conference, made it apparent that young children’s experiences differed across class lines. This led a colleague from overseas to question why UK ECEC research seemed to be ‘obsessed’ with social class. ‘Social class’ is not one of the ‘protected characteristics’ covered by the Equality Act 2010, discrimination against which is illegal. So how come we found it so important to draw people’s attention to it?
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