No one in my family or, I think, my neighbourhood had ever been to university. It just wasn’t something that working-class people considered as a real possibility. However, my mother was a very loving person and knew the importance of education. She taught me to read before I went to school and gave me a flying start. At that time, there were state-run secondary schools called ‘grammar schools’ in the UK. These were academically oriented. There was an exam called the 11+ that kids sat at the end of primary school, and the lucky few who passed were creamed off and sent to such schools. I was one of the lucky ones. 

Some of the better students at the school were again creamed off, and their education was accelerated in the “U Stream”. (‘U’ for university.) This gave them more time for advanced study (and so university entrance) in later years. There was a general assumption, which I took for granted and thought nothing of, that people in that stream would go to university. I matriculated with reasonable grades and applied for university. I had no idea about universities or university entrance, so I just did what my teachers advised me. I applied to a bunch of universities, including Cambridge, and was accepted by St John’s College. My mother was thrilled, but my father could not understand why I wanted to go to university. He thought that now that I had matriculated with decent grades, I should ‘go and get a nice steady job in a bank’.

University was a whole new world, unlike anything I had ever experienced. Cambridge University was a world of elite education, high culture, and people of a social class I had never met before. Traditionally, only people from private schools “got in” to Cambridge. But the university had recently instituted a policy of admitting more state school kids. The place was very cliquey, and I quickly made friends with other working-class kids. The private school children lived in their own cliques with a very different culture. For a start, they had a lot more money. Still, I benefitted from the social reforms of the post-WW2 Attlee Labour government, which meant that all my fees were paid by my local education authority, which also gave me a living allowance—not a king’s ransom, but enough to pay for my needs. There is no way my parents could have paid for all this. 

I developed an ambivalent relationship with Cambridge. My eyes were opened to the world of restaurants, jazz and classical music, art, philosophy, theatre, and drugs—none of which had featured in my working-class world. That was just an amazing experience. But Oxford and Cambridge are bastions of the British class system, and I realized all the privileges of the people on the other side of the class system. Having come to understand the British class system for the first time, I came to dislike the world of privilege—some of which was now, of course, my own.

I would not say that having other working-class students in my cohort was important to me at the time; it was just that “birds of a feather flock together”. On reflection, however, had there not been other working-class kids, and I had had to mix entirely with the kids from private schools, I would have found the experience very alienating. So I do think it is important, when you are a student, to have a cohort of friends who are in a similar socio-economic situation.

I studied mathematics at Cambridge but was a rather mediocre student. Cambridge’s social life was much more fun. But an old school friend told me about logic, so I started to attend some philosophy lectures and fell in love with the subject. By the time I finished my undergraduate degree, I knew I wanted to study it more. 

By that time, I was married, and we had a son. We moved to London. My wife took a degree in French at one college of the University of London, and I did a PhD in mathematical logic at another. However, my heart was always in philosophy. I wanted a university job when I finished my PhD, but getting one was not easy. I recall applying for 52 jobs (in both mathematics and philosophy) in the UK and elsewhere. In the end, I was offered a temporary job in philosophy at the University of St Andrews, and I jumped at it. I continued to apply for permanent jobs (now only in philosophy) and was offered one at the University of Western Australia. So we moved there—in effect, emigrating. After that, I worked at two more Australian Universities (Queensland and Melbourne) before moving to my present job in New York about 10 years ago.

Despite my working-class background, I had two things working in my favour. The first was a mother who gave me a head-start before I went to school—even though she herself had little education. The second was being given the educational opportunities afforded by the post-War Labour government reforms. The first, I think, shows how important the home environment is. Kids who come from a background where their education is not actively supported come to later education with a real disadvantage. The second shows the importance of state schools giving all kids the opportunity of an education which allows them to go on to higher education if they so wish, and just as importantly—maybe even more so—the financial support which enables them to do so. Had I not benefitted from these circumstances, my academic career would never have been possible. All of these things, of course, mean money. The relevant government bodies need to finance state schools adequately. This is at all levels: from pre-K through 12—and beyond, for those who miss their opportunities in the standard years. They also need to provide financial support for those students who require it to undertake tertiary education. Generally speaking, we have seen such resources dwindle in state education systems since the rise of “neo-liberal” economics—the Regan (US), Thatcher (UK), and Howard (Australia) years. 

Personally, I was carried along with the tide of a relatively academic education. The only important thing was how good the work you did was (as judged by the powers that be). Good teachers really do want to bring out the best in their students and are emotionally rewarded by seeing them progress. This is not to suggest that they are necessarily free from race/gender/class blinkers. Perhaps none of us can entirely escape these things. But all the philosophy teachers I know (or have known) care (or have cared) about all their students.

On a broader scale, however, the British class system works on two levels, both of which function to keep working-class kids out of university. The first level is purely financial. People who come from the wealthier and “governing” classes of society have access to financial resources, power, and contacts, which can be used to help their kids flourish in contemporary society. This is true in all societies I know. But the second level is a particular characteristic of Britain. (It is not so operative in the US, where wealth means everything, and Australasia, which is generally a more egalitarian society than the UK or the US.) People are stamped from an early age with an understanding of their class position, the restrictions that these places put on them, and the expectations that they conform to these. This is not to say that no one escapes these constraints—obviously, some do, as my own situation demonstrates. But such a thing is relatively exceptional. Given the fortunate circumstances from which I personally benefitted, the only challenges I faced were from my own academic limitations. In many ways, I was actually a pretty mediocre student until I found the subject that really moved me emotionally and intellectually. I was lucky that the educational system allowed me the flexibility of time and opportunity to do so. I guess that there is a lesson there too.

Graham Priest is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at The Graduate Center, City University of New York.