¹ This was demonstrated by Roberta G. Simmons and Morris Rosenberg who, in their study of Baltimore children, asked: ‘Have you ever heard about ‘social class’, or haven't you heard this term?’ Percentages responding ‘Yes’ were as follows: elementary school, 15 per cent; junior high school, 39 per cent; senior high school, 75 per cent. ‘Functions of Children's Perceptions of the Stratification System’, American Sociological Review, XXXVI (1971), 235–49, p. 244.Google Scholar

² See Mayer, Kurt B. and Buckley, Walter, Class and Society, 3rd edn. (New York: Random House, 1970), pp. 61–2Google Scholar; Bottomore, T. B., Classes in Modern Society (New York: Pantheon Books, 1966), p. 51Google Scholar; Key, V. O. Jr., Public Opinion and American Democracy (New York: Knopf, 1967), p. 122Google Scholar; and Ossowski, Stanislaw, Class Structure in thè Social Consciousness (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), p. 101.Google Scholar

³ Schreiber, E. M. and Nygreen, G. T., ‘Subjective Social Class in America: 1954–1968’, Social Forces, XLVIII (1970), 348–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Butler, David and Stokes, Donald, Political Change in Britain (London: Macmillan, 1969)Google Scholar; Kovenock, David M., Prothro, James W. and Associates, Explaining the Vote: Presidential Choices in the Nation and the States, 1968 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Institute for Research in Social Science, 1973)Google Scholar; and the University of Michigan Survey Research Center's Election Studies for 1966, 1968 and 1972.

⁴ Kovenock, , Prothro, and Associates, Explaining the Vote.Google Scholar

⁵ Regional differences appeared only in specific activities dependent upon climate or special geographical features: Douvan, Elizabeth and Adelson, Joseph, The Adolescent Experience (New York: Wiley, 1966), p. 311Google Scholar. For a comparison of adolescents in northern and southern English schools see Tapper, Ted, Young People and Society (London: Faber, 1971).Google Scholar

⁶ Grammar schools were not surveyed because they included less than 6 per cent of the area's student population.

⁷ Blau, Peter M. and Duncan, O. Dudley, The American Occupational Structure (New York: Wiley, 1967).Google Scholar

⁸ Interviews were administered by the authors with the help of graduate students in England and teachers in the United States. Materials were presented and items explained according to a standard format. Similarly, wherever possible, the staff answered questions with planned responses.

⁹ Considerable confusion has resulted from interpreting measures of stratification awareness as indicators of class consciousness. Class consciousness dimensions are discussed in Ossowski, , Class Structure in the Social Consciousness, pp. 72–3Google Scholar; Mayer, and Buckley, , Class and Society, p. 131Google Scholar; Bottomore, , Classes in Modern Society, pp. 81–2Google Scholar; and Dahrendorf, Ralf, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959), pp. 201–4.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Potter, David M., People of Plenty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954), pp. 101–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹ Simmons, and Rosenberg, , ‘Functions of Children's Perceptions of the Stratification System’, pp. 237–9.Google Scholar

¹² Hollingshead, August B., Elmtown's Youth: The Impact of Social Classes on Adolescents (New York: Wiley, 1949).Google Scholar

¹³ In their Baltimore study, Simmons and Rosenberg used the same item we have reported here. And, their results come very close to our own: 75 per cent of their high school students said they had heard the term, compared with 79 per cent in the present study. Simmons, and Rosenberg, , ‘Functions of Children's Perceptions of the Stratification System’, p. 244.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Himmelweit, H. T., Halsey, A. H. and Oppenheim, A. N., ‘The Views of Adolescents on Some Aspects of the Social Class Structure’, British Journal of Sociology, III (1952), 148–72, p. 153CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The 13- and 14-year-old boys in their analysis included 60 per cent responding: ‘I do not understand the question.’ Our 12-year-olds reported 56 per cent ‘don't knows’ to the same item.

¹⁵ From the perspective of item validity, less than 5 per cent of those claiming they had heard the term ‘social class’ denied that there were social classes in their country, or agreed that ‘There are no such things as social classes nowadays’. While this falls short of a satisfactory validity assessment, it does suggest that the students’ responses reflect consistent and meaningful usage of the class concept.

¹⁶ Himmelweit, , Halsey, and Oppenheim, , ‘The Views of Adolescents on Some Aspects of the Social Class Structure’, pp. 153–4, 170–1Google Scholar. See also Ford, Julienne, Social Class and the Comprehensive School (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), Chaps. 4 and 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Abramson, Paul, ‘The Differential Political Socialization of English Secondary School Students’, Sociology of Education, LX (1967), 246–60, p. 256CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Comparable adult data can be found in Butler, and Stokes, , Political Change in Britain, p. 67.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Hoggart, Richard, The Uses of Literacy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), p. 15Google ScholarJackson, Brian, Working Class Community (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968), pp. 160–4.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Richard F. Hamilton argues that between 1900 and 1950 there has been only a very modest decline in the manual proportion of the population. Class and Politics in the United States (New York: Wiley, 1972), pp. 154–9.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Lane, Robert E., Political Ideology (New York: Free Press, 1962), p. 59.Google Scholar

²⁰ Wilmott, Peter, Adolescent Boys of East London, revised edn. (Harmondsworth, Middx.: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 168.Google Scholar

²¹ This awareness is reinforced by experiences at the age when children begin to join cub packs and similar organizations: ‘Up we'd go into the yard … a right scruffy lot we were – and stare at all those brownies and cubs inside all with bright clean uniforms. They seemed so pretty, so clean. I always hated them.’ Jackson, Brian and Marsden, Dennis, Education and the Working Class, revised edn. (Harmondsworth Middx.: Penguin Books, 1966), p. 103.Google Scholar

²² Simmons, and Rosenberg, , ‘Functions of Children's Perception of the Stratification System’, p. 245.Google Scholar

²³ It is not at all unusual to find so many adolescents willing to characterize themselves by social class labels. Davies, A. F. discusses similar findings from Australia: ‘The Child's Discovery of Social Class’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, 1 (1965), 21–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Richard Centers, using the same item as reported in Table 6, found that labels were selected by 94 per cent of New Jersey secondary school students: ‘Social Class Identifications of American Youth’, Journal of Personality, xviii (1949–1950), 291–302, pp. 292–3Google Scholar. The percent selecting labels in Centers' sample is somewhat larger than in our own. This may be due to the fact that his students were told to write in ‘don't know’ when a question was impossible to answer, whereas our item offered ‘don't know’ as an explicit choice.

²⁴ Fifty-nine per cent of the English and 80 per cent of the Americans from skilled and un skilled working-class families label themselves middle-class or above. In the American case, this is a substantial increase over the 1947 adolescent data reported by Centers, ‘Social Class Identifications of American Youth’, p. 294.Google Scholar

²⁵ Family social class coding categories used in this analysis are: unskilled working class; skilled working class; lower middle class; and middle middle and upper middle class. The self-selected labels are: lower class; working class; middle class; upper middle class; and upper class.

²⁶ Simmons, and Rosenberg, , ‘Functions of Children's Perceptions of the Stratification System’, p. 245.Google Scholar

²⁷ For example: Key, , Public Opinion and American Democracy, p. 141Google Scholar; Mayer, and Buckley, , Class and Society, pp. 130–1.Google Scholar

²⁸ Butler, and Stokes, , Political Change in Britain, pp. 67–8Google Scholar; Runciman, W. G., Relative Deprivation and Social Justice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), pp. 155–62Google Scholar. Criticism of Centers' study sometimes overlooks the fact that his American respondents reasonably described upper and middle classes as composed of business and professional people and the working class as containing primarily manual workers. Centers, Richard, The Psychology of Social Classes (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1949), pp. 78–80.Google Scholar

²⁹ Bott, Elizabeth, Family and Social Network, 2nd edn. (London: Tavistock Publications, 1971), Pp. 172–87Google Scholar. In the West End, ‘work means manual labor, and the expenditure of physical energy under frequently unpleasant conditions. Non-manual jobs are not considered to require work’. Gans, Herbert J., The Urban Villagers (New York: Free Press, 1962), pp. 122–3.Google Scholar

³⁰ Simmons, and Rosenberg, , ‘Functions of Children's Perceptions of the Stratification System’, p. 246.Google Scholar

³¹ de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America, editors, Mayer, J. P. and Lerner, Max, translator, Lawrence, George (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), pp. 502–3 and passim.Google Scholar

³² Tocqueville, , Democracy in America, pp. 540–1Google Scholar. The argument has been carried forward by Lipset who synthesizes observations of D. W. Brogan and others on the subject: Lipset, , The First New Nation, pp. 112–13.Google Scholar

³³ Tocqueville, , Democracy in America, p. 510Google Scholar: ‘When inequality is the general rule in society, the greatest inequalities attract no attention. When everything is more or less level, the slightest variation is noticed.’

³⁴ Tocqueville, , Democracy in America, pp. 419–20Google Scholar; 509–10.

³⁵ Tocqueville, , Democracy in America, pp. 502–3.Google Scholar

³⁶ These items are: familiarity with the term ‘social class’ (see Table 1); belief that there are social classes in the respondent's country (see Table 2); rejection of the claim that there are no such things as social classes (see Table 3); and willingness to characterize oneself with a social class label.

³⁷ Lydall, Harold and Lansing, John B., ‘A Comparison of the Distribution of Personal Income and Wealth in the United States and Great Britain’, American Economic Review, IL (1959), 43–67Google Scholar. See also Nissel, Muriel, ed., Social Trends, III (London: HMSO, 1973), 83–98Google Scholar; Executive Office of the President: Office of Management and the Budget, Social Indicators 1973 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1973), pp. 151–87Google Scholar; and Miliband, Ralph, The State in Capitalist Society (New York: Basic Books, 1969), pp. 25–8.Google Scholar

³⁸ Rose, Richard, Politics in England (Boston: Little, Brown, 1964), p. 41Google Scholar; Sharpe, L. J., ‘American Democracy Reconsidered: Part I’, British Journal of Political Science, III (1973), 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁹ Compare Woodside's very American claim that all men are equal ‘not financially, not in influence, but equal to one another as to being a person’, with the Blackpool headteacher's: ‘I feel that one of the causes of social disorder today is the supposition that all are equal’: Lane, , Political Ideology, p. 67Google Scholar; and Jackson, Brian, Streaming: An Education System in Miniature (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964), p. 72Google Scholar; Runciman, , Relative Deprivation and Social Justice, p. 39–40Google Scholar; and Rose, Richard, Politics in England (Boston: Little, Brown, 1964), pp. 16–17Google Scholar. Similar assumptions are reflected in our adolescent survey. On a five-point semantic differential item (‘According to your understanding, most people are: unequal-equal’) 26 per cent of the Americans marked the extreme ‘Equal’ end of the continuum, compared with only 13 per cent of the English. Americans are said to be relatively free of snobbery: modest social origins are fre quently a source of pride, whereas, in England, they are often an embarrassment: Crosland, C. A. R., The Future of Socialism, revised edn. (New York: Basic Books, 1963), pp. 110–11.Google Scholar

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⁴¹ Hollingshead, , Elmtown's YouthGoogle Scholar; Warner, W. Lloyd et al. , Democracy in Jonesville (New York: Harper and Row, 1949).Google Scholar

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⁴³ Mobility rates are probably quite similar in the two countries. The difference is that Americans are taught not only that everyone should have a chance to climb, but that it is their duty to try: Lipset, Seymour Martin and Bendix, Reinhard, Social Mobility in Industrial Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), pp. 77–88Google Scholar; Mayer, and Buckley, , Class and Society, p. 138Google Scholar. In this vein, three times as many Americans as Britons reported, later in our interviews, that they might someday become lawyers (barristers) or congressmen (members of parliament).

⁴⁴ Bott, , Family and Social Network, pp. 188–9Google Scholar. The direction of influence is not as clear in this relationship as in preceding ones. Thus Simmons and Rosenberg, ‘Functions of Children's Perceptions of the Stratification System’, suggest that consciousness of occupational prestige differences produces the desire for upward mobility. Nonetheless, the dominant direction of influence would, on the basis of Tocqueville's theory, seem to flow in the opposite direction.

⁴⁵ See Bottomore, , Classes in Modern Society, pp. 47–8Google Scholar; Jackson, and Marsden, , Education and the Working Class, p. 114Google Scholar; and Young, Michael and Willmott, Peter, Family and Kinship in East London (Harmondsworth, Middx.: Penguin Books, 1962), pp. 176–7.Google Scholar

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⁴⁹ Warner, , Democracy in Jonesville, p. 85.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ See, Jackson, and Marsden, , Education and the Working Class, pp. 113, 250Google Scholar; and Willmott, , Adolescent Boys of East London, pp. 169–70Google Scholar. Himmelweit, Halsey and Oppenheim's 13- and 14-year-old boys were asked a question very similar to the one described in Table 7. Twelve-year-olds in our study seem to report only approximately 10 per cent less awareness of speech and dress symbols than did Himmelweit, Halsey and Oppenheim's respondents twenty years ago.

⁵¹ Hamilton, , Class and Politics in the United States, pp. 163–5.Google Scholar

⁵² For example: ‘About that time I saw what he was up to: he was trying to place me socially.’ Hollingshead, , Elmtown's Youth, p. 76Google Scholar. Cf., Bott, , Family and Social Network, p. 168.Google Scholar

⁵³ Willmott, , Adolescent Boys of East London, p. 25.Google Scholar

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⁵⁵ Hollingshead, , Elmtown's Youth, p. 259.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ It should be noted that the changes are modest and that age and class controls leave very small ns for this analysis.

⁵⁷ A British survey similarly found that the phrase, ‘People like myself’, led respondents to think in terms of occupation and stratification: Runciman, , Relative Deprivation and Social Justice, p. 161.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Ford, , Social Class and the Comprehensive School, pp. 76–83Google Scholar; Warner, , Democracy in Jonesville, p. 83Google Scholar; Hollingshead, , Elmtown's Youth, Chap. 9.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Bott, , Family and Social Network, pp. 189–91Google Scholar. See also Ford, , Social Class and the Comprehensive School, pp. 65–6.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Adelson, Joseph, ‘The Political Imagination of the Young Adolescent’, Daedalus, c (1971), p. 1013.Google Scholar

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⁶⁴ Hollingshead, , Elmtown's Youth, p. 148.Google Scholar

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⁶⁷ Several different perspectives on poverty are discussed by Miller, S. M. and Riessman, Frank, Social Class and Social Policy (New York: Basic Books, 1968), pp. 53–6.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Lane, , Political Ideology, p. 61Google Scholar; Centers, , The Psychology of Social Classes, p. 95.Google Scholar

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⁷¹ Ford, , Social Class and the Comprehensive School, p. 115Google Scholar. See also Tapper, , Young People and Society, Chap. 8Google Scholar; Dahrendorf, , Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society, pp. 283–4Google Scholar; and Parkin, Frank, Class Inequality and the Political Order (New York: Praeger, 1971), pp. 82–4.Google Scholar

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