A Working-Class Economics Group
Recently I had the pleasure of leading an RC working-class economics group.
For me, a working-class woman, economics has always been “up there,” not for me, a mysterious subject that was “too hard” for me to learn. Those in power don’t want working-class people to know about or participate in economics. The message is that “this is how the world is, always has been, and if it’s not working for you, then it’s your own failure.” Working-class and poor people need to understand more about economics as we take bigger and more visible leadership in changing the world. We can come up with [create] something different and talk about it with other working-class people. I’ve needed to do this in a working-class group. To have a chance of learning, I’ve had to be with people who had similar experiences in the school system.
Working-class children are treated shockingly badly in the education system. This puts many of us off [discourages many of us] from studying or even learning. We are ignored, shamed, and humiliated. At the same time, we are stigmatised as “trouble,” a waste of time, and not intelligent.
I was lucky in that my mum helped me to read and write before I started school, even though she herself struggled with both. Some of my family left school hardly able to read or write. They were not lacking in intelligence. The school system, set up to serve the interests of the owning class and in the hands of middle-class teachers, smashes working-class people. I hated school so much that I stopped going for the last two years and came away with nothing. We working-class people may need many, many Co-Counselling sessions on school, learning, teachers, violence, and how we were made to feel stupid, again and again.
Of course, despite how we were hurt, we do use our minds and intelligence all the time. For example, my husband is a plasterer and construction worker. As it was for me, the oppression was too much for him; he hated school and now hates reading or anything that looks like “studying.” He has always loved building and plastering, which he learnt from his dad and other men around him. I am constantly stunned by what he achieves in a day as he applies his thinking to engineering, architecture, math, building, teamwork, and creating and fixing things that are beautiful and last for years. If he comes up against something he doesn’t know, he will “study” it for as long as it takes to learn it—but of course, in general, only academic study is viewed as an expression of intelligence.
I needed to take on [undertake] learning economics with working-class people, those with the same battle, so we could understand each other, openly show our struggles, appreciate each other, and cheer each other on. Heather Parker and I came up with [thought of] the idea of an economics book group to which we would invite our working-class Co-Counsellors. I would lead the group, and we would read, and think and talk about, Doughnut Economics (by Kate Raworth). The group met for seven times, every two weeks. That gave us time to read a chapter between meetings.
Everyone, including working-class people, love learning to begin with. Working-class children love to learn. However, as we become working-class adults, we often lose our love of learning. This is due to the vicious oppression at school, mostly carried out by middle-class people and then passed on in our families due to the internalised oppression.
I remember as a child loving to learn to ride a bike, to read, to paint. It was fun. But then came school. It got harder and harder, and I felt worse and worse about myself. Learning became a struggle. As working-class people, we often give up because we can’t bear how hard it is or how stupid we feel. Our brains are still amazing, we still have all the capability, but we were made to feel stupid, which is why we often feel stupid now. Also, as children we mostly learned things with others. As we got older, the feelings of shame, failure, and wanting to give up increased so that trying to learn became something we did alone. Our economics group was set up to contradict all this.
I wanted the group to be fun, but I knew the internalised oppression would come up. I encouraged everyone to stick with the group and keep discharging. To combat any feelings of isolation, everyone had a learning partner to keep in touch with, have sessions with, and encourage.
The group was not a discharge group. Although we did short mini-sessions, our priority was talking about what we had read and learnt. People’s sessions were mostly not in the group. The idea was to push ourselves during the group time to share our thinking and learning, not to have our biggest sessions.
Everyone got space to talk at least twice during the group time and then to add to that or ask questions. It was challenging for us all. Often we felt we had nothing to say. But given space to think, and listen to each other, we realised that we were learning lots and that everyone did have things to say—usually lots.
To help people put their thoughts together, I asked questions like, “What is GDP? Is it a good measure in economics? Why (or why not)? What could we use instead?” Or “Classical economics often uses the Circular Flow Diagram. Does it work, or are there problems with this model?”
I loved how we were discussing these things, at the beginning. I could not have imagined it.
Much learning in education is based on finding the “right” answer so we can please our teacher (and avoid humiliation). I wanted to give people space to think for themselves. We had a tone of respect, although of course we laughed a lot. Sometimes people wanted to question things or disagree, and that was brilliant [excellent]! It was all about listening and disagreeing in a respectful way or asking a question to push each other’s thinking. It was truly wonderful to hear everyone’s thoughts, even if we disagreed. There was a feeling of camaraderie and being a team—some of the best bits of being working class.
We all stuck at it [persisted]; no one left. Some weeks people contacted me saying, “I won’t come this week. I haven’t read it/ haven’t got time to read it/ it’s too hard.” I reminded them that even if they only had time to read one paragraph or one page, that was still an achievement, and they could learn from it and think about it. What we were doing was revolutionary, so of course we would feel all the effects of the oppression. I kept reminding them to not give up, to have sessions, and that they could come to the group and talk about what they had learnt—that it was not competitive, and we would help each other. I wanted the group to be a place where people felt pleased with every bit of what they had learnt, whether they had read a page or a chapter. It was a real achievement and something new.
I used some videos to show examples of intelligent economics in the world. We also focused on the practical use, in our own and others’ lives, of what we were learning and how we could share it with other working-class people.
There are reasons we have struggled with economics. It’s been made out to be [presented as] something that only certain people can understand or contribute to, and those people certainly aren’t working class. The theme of the group was very much “we are all economists now.”
I feel proud of all of us in the “Working-Class Economics Think Tank,” as I liked to call it. We put a lot in and got a lot out. I am now thinking about what’s next.
Nottingham, England
(Present Time 205, October 2021)