Loved your rant! I am the daughter of two working class/middle class immigrants. my mother, had almost no education-- a chronic illness in pre antibiotics days left her an invalid from age 8 or so till post WWII when with a shot or two of penicillin, she went from constant fevers of chorea -"St Vitus dance" to a 90% healthy adult. (some residual heart valve damage). my da went to vocational school...
I am very bright--as a child IQ tested above 165-- but i grew up in a household with out books-- my parents read, and i had free access to a library, but no guidance. and being a baby boomer, i was in over crowded school class--at one point 81 children where packed into a class designed for 40 to 50--which is still way to big. And then too, it was a parochial school–(catholic) so my education was further limited*
my ex husband was convinced part of my bad spelling was, 1-no dictionary at home, 2--no attention at school.
but it spite of all this, i learned to read-- and to read more than fiction (mum still reads 95% fiction) and to collect dictionaries. (first edition Partridges', chambers, dictionaries of idioms, all sorts of dictionaries.) to go on to get a degree..
but i am very aware that i missed a lot of the finer points of being educated person. my reading has saved me, but as I mentioned on of the threads, when i first read Wodenhouse, i didn't find it funny. I had no ideas about upper class society, or golf, or butlers. When PBS (Public Broadcasting System) first aired "Jeeves"icould see it was funny, but I couldn't see it on the page. I had no context.
as industrials countries create more opportunities-- people like me get educated... but we are a step or two behind those of you who where lucky enough to grow up in an environment that right from the beginning, offered you guidance and exposure to books, literature, grammar!
so cut us some slack!
* Shanks did a bit about Indian history vs. English history–
In the catholic church view, there was a "good queen mary" Most of the rest of the world knows her as "bloody mary" (daughter of Henry VIII).
