What many do not understand is that the Social Mobility issue is one that sits along the same road travelled by all of the different prejudices that have become such great celebrity causes.
The only difference is that the prejudices that create barriers to social mobility have been ringfenced by the reality that it is not fashionable for those who are rich and popular with public voices to challenge public thinking by championing the fight against poverty and the boundaries that surround it as a cause in any meaningful way.
Sadly, like many of the ills that society faces, tackling Social Mobility issues requires decision makers to actually understand the problem and then use the tools at their disposal to affect change surrounding a range of interconnected problems that are not and never can be directly in their hands.
It doesn’t matter how many initiatives that Government or the Social Mobility Commission come up with on their behalf.
It doesn’t matter how many rules or laws are created or changed to force what politicians believe to be the doors of opportunity wide open.
There is not one initiative that will work for everyone who needs help, until we have all accepted and learned to change the way that we think about anyone of anything about them that is different to what we consider to be normal – in the sense of how we see ourselves and how we were brought up or conditioned to be.
Replacing negative prejudices with positive prejudices is just swapping one set of prejudices for another. So, the result will always be unfairness.
Adam Tugwell 