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It’s A Big World

At the moment, I’m a quarter of the way through reading Bleak House by CharlesDickens. As well as being a big book with small writing, it’s a passionate denunciation of 

 poor parenting and the gap between rich and poor. Through a series of judicious

coincidences it looks as if its main characters will find themselves in a classic Dickensiandenouement.

The coincidences and descriptions of deprived children got me thinking about recentdescriptions in the newspapers of feral children. Much like Dickens I’ve always thought

that the gap between rich and poor was a product of wealth and education rather than

distance. The coincidences that Dickens describes anticipate the theory of six degrees of 

separation and it always seemed to me that however virulent the description of hoodies,its likely the editor of the Daily Mail is only six steps away from one of them.

The experiments which brought the theory to public attention were conducted by Stanley

Milgrim, one of those brilliant mad scientists from the last century whose name few of usknow but whose work underpins our modern understanding of self. In 1967 he published

results which seemed to prove that two randomly chosen people were only six familymembers, friends or acquaintances away from each other. But since he and subsequent

attempts to prove the theory only achieved a 30% success rate, maybe an alternative

interpretation is more appropriate.

You could for instance argue that a reasonable proportion of the 70% would have thrown

the survey away as junk mail and maybe a further sample lacked the confidence in their 

own networks to participate. But I’m inclined to be sceptical that this can account for a40% differential.

Instead, as the gap between rich and poor widens, with research showing the poorest 10%of households live on £147 per week (after inflation) versus the £1,033 of the richest

households, maybe the correct conclusion is that we live in a bigger world than we like to

imagine.

Could it be that the child of the middle class professional parents, who goes to a

Montessori nursery or a very good comprehensive primary as determined by the

catchment area his parents bought into. Then onto an independent, grammar or a goodcomprehensive as determined by the aforementioned before setting sail for one of the

Russell group universities, never crosses paths with his opposite, the child of parents who

can’t provide; education, family or God.

Maybe if all children went to comprehensive schools their paths would cross and the

 pressure of middle class parents would force standards up. Just as, if all young adultswere subject to National Service and at risk of ending up in Iraq or Afghanistan, rich and

 poor would become more than acquaintances and middle class parents in uproar would

ensure we weren’t in such a quagmire.

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It’s comforting to think, like Dickens, that this is a small world with us all a few judicious

coincidences away from each other but the science seems to say otherwise, six degrees of 

separation is no more than an urban myth.

Gazi (29/09/2009)