Is it a matter of Class? What class means to me

Class. 

Oxford dictionary says it's: "A set or category of things having a property or feature in common and differentiated from other, by kind or quality." Urban Dictionary says it's: “A word used to describe something that’s amazing and cool.” My good friend Ozzy says it's about money and my other friend Chloe says it's about social standing. You can imagine this started a debate. The funny thing is, they were both right, but why?

Much like many words in the English language, the same word can have different meanings to people of different ages and walks of life. 

For example, to those in primary school it's their classrooms, where they learn and play for hours on end. In secondary, it's a dreaded walk to English at 9am. But this is also the point when "class" becomes more than an innocent jab at the academic system. It becomes a segregator: a position you were assigned. 

I believe this is partly due to the fault of social media. Before you would learn it in the home or later on in your academic career, but now you are introduced to the concept on social media sites like TikTok, Instagram and even Pinterest. All of these are sites that a large demographic of young people have had longer access and exposure to than their older and less "tech-savvy" peers.

In all honesty I don't think about "class" very often, if at all. That is until I take public transport. For example, if you watch the people who get on and where they choose to sit after assessing who is where. Specifically, if they have the choice on where to sit, but the only option they have is to sit by someone else. You might notice they make the choice to sit by people who appear the same as them, for simple reasons such as uniform, hair colour, age, appearance, gender. This obviously is not for all cases, sometimes they make the choice on where to sit based on their internal criteria or that if they don't sit down somewhere they will be thrown off balance or into another passenger. 

In my experience this observation is especially applicable on the London buses. Even though I was only there for two days, I found that people on the buses would rather stand, despite there being four spaces free because unconsciously the people they would have to sit next to don't fit this description. 

So here's a little poem about my experiences and views called: “Is it a matter of Class?” 

(Background image via Pablo Stanley on Lummi)