No matter that the vast majority of working class kids, despite being amongst the poorest in the western world, are not engaged in acts of violence and vandalism. All are now branded chavs and hoodies and are alternately portrayed as either figures of fun or the new enemy within.
And yet little is said about the fighting, assaults and vandalism in the towns of Rock and Daymer Bay In Cornwall, where every year up to 700 public school pupils take part in all-night beach parties, using local hedgerows and fences to build bonfires. By the end of the summer holidays last year, 103 crimes had been recorded on Daymer and Polzeath beaches, and eight arrests had been made, prompting local residents to hire private security guards to protect them.
So it was refreshing to read the views of Matthew Holehouse, a Year 12 grammar school pupil and Times Educational Supplement columnist, who identifies the anti-chav phenomenon for exactly what it is class-based snobbery.
*Dont mock the chav*
Its not big or clever to make fun of disadvantaged teenagers, its just plain old class-based snobbery, writes Matthew Holehouse...
"Chavs! Theyre everywhere! High streets and shopping centres are being swamped. Sporting Burberry caps, tracksuits, shaven heads and white trainers, smoking, spitting and looking shifty, hordes of youths coalesce outside McDonalds and in parks across the country to drink cheap cider and listen to Eminem. No town, it seems, is safe from the chavalanche.
And how we laugh at them. Last Christmas you could buy chav joke books, which were essentially rehashed Irish and dumb blonds gags. Little Britains Vicky Pollard has been hailed as a work of genius. Wayne Rooney won fame for brilliant football, and sustains it for having a chav name and a leopard-print chav girlfiend.
More sinisterly, websites have sprung up, inviting visitors to send in pictures of the local chav scum and buy hilarious anti-chav wristbands. Theyve become synonymous, rather unjustly, with muggings, vandalism and yobbery. When Tony Blair talks about a culture of respect in Britain, and newspapers demand action against the gangs of feral youths, we all know whom they mean. Chav-bashing is a national hobby, and sadly, its now OK for us to loathe our contemporaries.
Hang on a second. Being a chav, I think, stems from more than simple choice. John Prescott might claim that were all middle class now, but chavs are essentially working-class white kids who dare to appear in public. They dont aspire to be accountants and they dont live in suburbia. They have the temerity to buy fake designer labels, not because they cant tell the difference from the genuine article, but because they dont have hundreds of pounds spare to buy it. One newspaper article smugly referred to them as a peasant underclass. In a way theyre probably more right than they intended.
Mocking the way disadvantaged teenagers live isnt biting social satire, so much as old-fashioned, class-based snobbery. Its not the association with anti-social behaviour that makes them a legitimate target for public ridicule, but their social faux pas. Chavs arent criminal, just frightfull In a sense the way they express themselves is immaterial; its just the fact that theyre, well, there. Remember the Victorian idea of the undeserving poor? Theyre alive and well and shopping at JJB Sports.
I recently stayed in a private boarding school for a schools seminar. On the dorm corridors they had framed pictures of their chav-themed Christmas disco, with tall, rosy-cheeked, foppish Year 9s in Nike tracksuits and gold chains, pulling unconvincing rapper poses. It was an admirable effort: sovereign rings must be quite hard to come by in rural Shropshire. If youre 14 and missing the world outside of school it would, I suppose, have been fun.
But swapping blazer and jeans for tracksuit and bling is basically class tourism; privileged kids having a good time by pretending to be people living on sink estates who, chances are, theyve never even met. Its a Black and White Minstrel Show for our generation (only with worse dancing). If schools are meant to instil some sense of equality and respect, rather than confirming schoolboy prejudices about people from other backgrounds, then this sort of thing has to go. Teachers ought to play a part in discouraging such hostility. Otherwise, were just asking to have our phones nicked. Innit."
No matter that the vast majority of working class kids, despite being amongst the poorest in the western world, are not engaged in acts of violence and vandalism. All are now branded chavs and hoodies and are alternately portrayed as either figures of fun or the new enemy within.
And yet little is said about the fighting, assaults and vandalism in the towns of Rock and Daymer Bay In Cornwall, where every year up to 700 public school pupils take part in all-night beach parties, using local hedgerows and fences to build bonfires. By the end of the summer holidays last year, 103 crimes had been recorded on Daymer and Polzeath beaches, and eight arrests had been made, prompting local residents to hire private security guards to protect them.
So it was refreshing to read the views of Matthew Holehouse, a Year 12 grammar school pupil and Times Educational Supplement columnist, who identifies the anti-chav phenomenon for exactly what it is class-based snobbery.
*Dont mock the chav*
Its not big or clever to make fun of disadvantaged teenagers, its just plain old class-based snobbery, writes Matthew Holehouse...
"Chavs! Theyre everywhere! High streets and shopping centres are being swamped. Sporting Burberry caps, tracksuits, shaven heads and white trainers, smoking, spitting and looking shifty, hordes of youths coalesce outside McDonalds and in parks across the country to drink cheap cider and listen to Eminem. No town, it seems, is safe from the chavalanche.
And how we laugh at them. Last Christmas you could buy chav joke books, which were essentially rehashed Irish and dumb blonds gags. Little Britains Vicky Pollard has been hailed as a work of genius. Wayne Rooney won fame for brilliant football, and sustains it for having a chav name and a leopard-print chav girlfiend.
More sinisterly, websites have sprung up, inviting visitors to send in pictures of the local chav scum and buy hilarious anti-chav wristbands. Theyve become synonymous, rather unjustly, with muggings, vandalism and yobbery. When Tony Blair talks about a culture of respect in Britain, and newspapers demand action against the gangs of feral youths, we all know whom they mean. Chav-bashing is a national hobby, and sadly, its now OK for us to loathe our contemporaries.
Hang on a second. Being a chav, I think, stems from more than simple choice. John Prescott might claim that were all middle class now, but chavs are essentially working-class white kids who dare to appear in public. They dont aspire to be accountants and they dont live in suburbia. They have the temerity to buy fake designer labels, not because they cant tell the difference from the genuine article, but because they dont have hundreds of pounds spare to buy it. One newspaper article smugly referred to them as a peasant underclass. In a way theyre probably more right than they intended.
Mocking the way disadvantaged teenagers live isnt biting social satire, so much as old-fashioned, class-based snobbery. Its not the association with anti-social behaviour that makes them a legitimate target for public ridicule, but their social faux pas. Chavs arent criminal, just frightfull In a sense the way they express themselves is immaterial; its just the fact that theyre, well, there. Remember the Victorian idea of the undeserving poor? Theyre alive and well and shopping at JJB Sports.
I recently stayed in a private boarding school for a schools seminar. On the dorm corridors they had framed pictures of their chav-themed Christmas disco, with tall, rosy-cheeked, foppish Year 9s in Nike tracksuits and gold chains, pulling unconvincing rapper poses. It was an admirable effort: sovereign rings must be quite hard to come by in rural Shropshire. If youre 14 and missing the world outside of school it would, I suppose, have been fun.
But swapping blazer and jeans for tracksuit and bling is basically class tourism; privileged kids having a good time by pretending to be people living on sink estates who, chances are, theyve never even met. Its a Black and White Minstrel Show for our generation (only with worse dancing). If schools are meant to instil some sense of equality and respect, rather than confirming schoolboy prejudices about people from other backgrounds, then this sort of thing has to go. Teachers ought to play a part in discouraging such hostility. Otherwise, were just asking to have our phones nicked. Innit."