Equality and deference

EducationGuardian.co.uk | News crumb | Prince 'out of touch' with education, says Clarke: I stand and applaud Charles Clarke, education minister responding to revelatiosn that Prince Charles seems to think that certain of us have gianed ideas 'au dessus de nos gares' [reference to Terence Rattigan's play, French without Tears, in case you thought my command of French had seriously dwindled] "[Prince Charles's ] remarks drew a stinging response from Mr Clarke. 'We can't all be born to be king, but we can all have a position where we can really aspire for ourselves and for our families to do the very best they possibly can,' he said. 'I want to encourage that culture rather than the other way round.'
The education secretary criticised 'patronising and old fashioned' views that said people could not do certain things, saying that in Norfolk, where he is an MP, people used to be told they could not be better than farm labourers."

I feel strongly about this since I was given careers advice that saw my future as no better than shop work; simply because I was at a secondary modern school and came from a working/lower middle class family. Prince Charles is seriously in danger of losing the respect of those who are nominally his future subjects. I'm afraid that his remark that too many people think that they can do things they can't is [a] not largely true or there would be no market for life coaching, and there clearly is; [b] is applicable to the rpiviledged classes -British history is replete with people of the upper classes with all the advantages of education and training money can buy making complete asses of themselves; [c] as Charles Clarke points out, it is better to have a culture of possibility thinkers than a cowed population.

The prince appears to have overgeneralised a perception of one person by linking it to a particular ideological reflex of his borne of a priviledged upbringing that knows little of how it feels to know that you can do certain things but being denied the opportunities simply because of ancestry and social background. Grrrrrrrrr!