The working class have a different relationship with risk

I have talked a lot about my working class roots and it is one topic I feel the right to talk about given how I did grow up in a working class family. I think people who are not working class may stay away from this topic for the same reason because it is potentially controversial and offensive to working class people and I think this is one aspect of the working class mindset that I would like to talk about in this post. Firstly, allow me to start with a childhood memory to help you understand what this mindset is. I was about 14 years old when this happened - the history teacher Mr Tan told us to read up on chapter 17 over the weekend and I simply forgot to do it as I was a terrible student! So on Monday morning, Mr Tan said, "I'm going to find out if you have done the reading I told you to. Everyone, clear your desk right now, I don't want to see any of your books on the desk." It was at that point that I thought, oh no, I have not done the reading, I'm in so much trouble now. The teacher then walked around the room asking random students questions from chapter 17 and if the student couldn't give the right answer, the teacher would give the student detention. I carefully observed the pattern of behaviour in the room - when Mr Tan asked a fairly easy question, some of the students would put their hands up automatically, as if to say, "please let me answer that easy question, I know the answer. Then you wouldn't come back to ask me a more difficult question later." Thus Mr Tan would deliberately ignore the students who had put up their hands and deliberately pick someone who didn't put up their hand to answer that question. If I may clarify, often these students knew the answers anyway as they did do their homework - they were simply the more quiet and introverted students who didn't say that much in class. Thankfully, Mr Tan did use the opportunity to talk a lot during this process, so if the question was, "what year did the Americans drop the two atom bombs in Japan to end WW2?" He would then go on to discuss the details on the bombings before going onto the next question. All this while, I was very nervously watching the clock on the wall - counting down the minutes until the end of that lesson. What did I have to do to avoid being asked a question? 

I went for a high risk strategy, I put my hand up enthusiastically every time Mr Tan asked a question as if I knew the answer and pretended to be disappointed when he asked someone else to answer the question. If a classmate got the answer wrong, I would shake my head with disapproval in a judgmental way. I then calculated how long Mr Tan spent on each question and how many students there were in the class and concluded that he simply didn't have enough time left to question every student in the class, so if I played my cards right, I could get away with it despite not having done the homework. It was a game of 'call my bluff' with Mr Tan and it worked, Mr Tan even had to tell me to calm down and keep quiet when I begged him to let me answer his questions. At the end of the lesson, it was one of the most tense countdown I had experienced as I watched Mr Tan finally ran out of time before he got to asked me a question - I managed to dodge the bullet by convincing Mr Tan that I had done the reading. Should I have done my homework like a good student? Yes of course but did I experience a certain sense of glee having fooled Mr Tan and triumphed in this game of 'call my bluff'? I did think at that point, I could have spent my weekend reading chapter 17 but instead I went to gymnastics training and then hung out at the mall afterwards; in my mind, it was like winning a gamble. Allow me to state for the record, I do not condone that kind of behaviour at all, if you are a student, you should always do all the homework that your teacher gives you. Please allow me to give you another story with a similar theme - so this happened during my army days and at my unit, they would do an inspection of all the records every year and I was told that the inspecting officer would visit the unit and request the records of three random months in the last calendar year, the officer wouldn't have time to go through all 12 months of records but wouldn't tell you in advance which months' records would be selected so you would have to make sure that your entire archive of records were in perfect order. This was certainly not the case in my unit as the guy I had taken over from had just finished his military service, hence he knew he would have left the unit before that next inspection would happen and I was the very unlucky soldier who had taken over from him. Would the inspector accept that excuse? Not at all - regardless, I would still be punished, if the unit failed the inspection. 

When I was informed of the inspection with a week's notice, I knew I could tidy up the records to a decent standard in about two weeks but I simply didn't have enough time to do 12 months' worth of records in a week. Simply tidying up each month's records a little simply wouldn't allow me to pass that inspection anyway so I came up with a high risk strategy. I would only do the even months (February, April, June, August, October and December) and not even bother with the odd months in the time that I had. Thus on the day of the inspection, I was rolling the dice and hoping that the inspector would only pick even months. I greeted him politely and confidently, as if to say, "take a look, everything is perfect here and I have nothing to hide." The inspector then requested the records of April, July and October, I fought hard to stifle a sense of panic but I had to improvise. I brought him the records for April, June and October; then before he noticed, I was the one who realized my mistake and said, "oh I am terribly sorry sir, did you say June or July? You said July didn't you? I somehow got confused and brought you the records for June." However, because I had been so police and cooperative, the inspector said, "that is fine, I only need to look at the record for three months - I'll look at June instead, it doesn't matter." So once again, I used my social skills to get myself out of a sticky situation. At this point you're probably wondering, okay Alex very interesting stories from your past but what do those two examples have to do with being working class? Well my father is 85 years old and he lived most of his life in Singapore after having spent the first 12 years of his life in Malaysia (it was all British Malaya back when he was a child). Whilst I pride myself in being a polyglot who is fluent in 7 languages whilst being able to get by in 25 languages, my father has adamantly refused to learn English all this time despite the fact that he lives in a country where English is the main language of education and business. The reason why my father refuses to learn English is because he was sent to a Chinese medium school - his entire education was conducted in Mandarin, so all subjects like maths, science, history and geography were taught in Chinese whilst English was only taught as a second/foreign language and he was really only taught the basics. Those who chose that path were assuming that English would not be important in the future, or that they would get away with it. 

My father had finished his former education by the late 1950s and for a while, things were okay for him until the late-1970s, when the government decided to phase out all forms of Chinese medium education and make all students study only in English - Chinese would be relegated to a second language for the vast majority of students and it was clear that those older Chinese Singaporeans like my father who couldn't speak much English (or any English at all) were going to be at a major disadvantage. What did this cohort of older Chinese Singaporeans do then? Well, they were split into two camps - the first camp simply accept the way the situation had unfolded and started learning English. I remember I had a math teacher in secondary school who spoke English with a strong Chinese accent, he was one of those older Chinese Singaporeans who didn't learn much English at school as he went to a Chinese medium school but worked hard to make up for it later on as an adult when he realized that the only way he was able to continue teaching maths was if he could deliver those lessons in English rather than Mandarin. Then there were those like my father who stuck to their guns: my father refused to speak English and made zero effort to improve his English. There was this incident in Singapore when we were in a restaurant and the word 'fish' was on the menu - my father asked me what it meant and I rolled my eyes. I knew my father couldn't speak English but I thought he was able to recognize simple words like 'fish', but no, he asked me what he meant almost in an act of "I adamantly refuse to even look at that word on the menu and even if I do understand it, I shall pretend I don't." When I was very young, I did naively ask him why he doesn't want to try to learn English: he went into a long rant about how it wasn't his fault that he was sent to Chinese medium school as that's what his older brother did, it was entirely his parents' decision in any case so if it was a wrong or bad decision, I should blame his parents and not him. He went on to complain that a Chinese medium education is superior to an English medium education and that the Singaporean government had made a terrible mistake. In short, his refusal to learn English was his small gesture of protest, a solo act of defiance, against the decision taken by his government way back in the 1970s. 

My father had plenty of time and opportunity to learn English but he had turned it into a game of "call my bluff". He worked as a primary school teacher where he taught Chinese - thus at least he had picked a career where he could avoid using any English. However, all teachers were required to run some extra curricular activities like a sports club and my father taught basketball for many years. Because he spent his childhood in Malaysia, he had a decent grasp of Malay and was able to converse with all the Malay students in Malay (thus avoiding English) but when it came to the Indian kids or anyone else who could not speak either Mandarin or Malay , he would go as far as to make one of the Chinese kids translate for him just to avoid speaking any English. He only befriended the other colleagues who could speak to him in Mandarin or Malay, ignoring the ones who spoke English. He used his wife and children to do various tasks for him (such as the utility bills) which involved using English. If he had made the effort to learn English, it would have been hugely beneficial for him - it would widen his social circles, he could access a lot more media and entertainment in English, it would make traveling abroad so much easier for him and most of all, he could have connected a lot better with his three children who grew up with English as a first language. I have two sisters and my eldest sister actually really sucks at Chinese as she never used it since she took her last Chinese exam at the age of 18 - in her office, she has Malay and Indian colleagues, thus everything has to default to English all the time and no one would ever use any Chinese at work. At least my other sister has a much better grasp of Chinese and I pretend that I no longer speak Mandarin confidently, just to annoy my father. Remember the two stories I told you earlier about how I played that same game of 'call my bluff' when I didn't do my history homework and when I faced that inspection in the army? Well, my father is doing the same thing - it is called, "let's see if I can live yet another year in Singapore without using English." Hence his 'reward' if he 'wins' is the time and effort he would have saved by not learning English and that is a game he is very determined to win. 

If that is his logic, then I must question what his 'reward' actually is and that boils down to this - what has my father done with all this free time though? Actually, not much at all. This value of this reward is only worth what he has done with that time and effort he has saved, but the truth is he has mostly spent it all on the living room sofa, watching trashy programmes on TV until he falls asleep. He simply wasn't motivated enough to try to do anything more and squandered all that free time he had 'won' by not learning English. If he had done something incredible with all that spare time, if he had achieved something that had made that victory meaningful and significant, then it would have made sense but my point is, he didn't. It is time for an analogy: I once went to a charity event where there was a raffle, so it is a method to raise money for a cause by selling numbered tickets for a small amount of money. The prizes are usually donated so all money raised can go directly to the cause: at this event, the top prize was a very expensive bottle of champagne. The elderly lady who won the prize was so excited and as she claimed that bottle of champagne, she exclaimed, "thank you, I've never won anything before, wow this is incredible!" Her husband then asked if she would like to pose for a photo with her bottle of champagne and it was at this moment that the bottle somehow slipped from her hands when she was trying to pass her phone to her husband and  it smashed onto the floor before her husband had even taken the photo. Everyone just stood there in shock for a moment as we realized what had happened - that bottle of champagne was worth about £3,000 and all that was left of it now was a pile of broken glass in a big puddle of the finest champagne. That's a good example of someone winning a prize but squandered it due to their folly - so even though they did win a victory of sorts, they didn't benefit from the prize at all. A victory is meaningless if you squander the prize, a victory is only meaningful if you could benefit from the reward or prize - in the case of the lady who smashed that bottle of champagne by dropping it on the floor, what she should have done was at either sell that champagne for a lot of money or at least have enjoyed the experience of drinking something that expensive. If she had done either of those things, then yes she would have enjoyed that sweet victory, but unfortunately she just dropped that bottle on the floor and smashed it instead. 

But to be fair to my father, is there any reason why he should have avoided learning English then? Well a possible rationale is that he believes that he absolutely no chance of improving his English as he just doesn't have the ability to learn a new language - so by that token, any time and effort spent on learning English would simply be a dead loss. If that incredibly pessimistic outlook was accurate, then it would make sense just to cut your losses and not even attempt to learn English. This is not a totally irrational line of reasoning: let's go back to the raffle where the elderly lady dropped the bottle of champagne on the floor and smashed it to bits. I confess I chose not to buy a ticket at that event as I had taken a look at the size of the audience in the hall and then I did a quick survey of the prizes. Being teetotal, the grand prize of a very expensive bottle of champagne didn't really appeal to me at all - even if I had won it, I would have tried to sell to get some money and I have of no idea how one would go about selling something like that or what kind of price it would fetch in the open market. I concluded that I wasn't really that keen on any of the prizes and I stood little chance of winning anything given the ratio of the number of people in the room to the prizes.  Therefore after that quick cost-benefit analysis, I declined to buy a raffle ticket then and I think it was a rational decision. It is perfectly reasonable to choose not to invest your time or money in a venture if you think the chances of success is too low to justify even trying. But allow me to share my perspective on the topic of learning languages: would my father ever become fluent in English? No, he wouldn't. But would he be able to learn it to a decent standard in order to reap the benefits of being able to use English in everyday life? Yes, if he was willing to put in the effort. I speak many languages but am fluent in seven of them - let's look at Spanish which is my fourth language. My Spanish is entirely self-taught, I never took a lesson in my life before and have never had a Spanish teacher before, yet I have put in an immense amount of effort to become fluent in Spanish. Will I ever sound like a proper native speaker? No, in fact one Spanish friend recently commented I have a very unusual accent in Spanish in that I have some elements of South American Spanish mixed in with Madrid standard Spanish. Do I make mistakes in Spanish? Yes, all the time but does that stop me from communicating effectively in Spanish? No, I am still able to use my Spanish in my work efficiently - in spite of the fact that I am neither a native speaker nor totally fluent. 

A lot of older Singaporeans speak imperfect English - they will have a strong Asian accent and often use non-standard grammar associated with Singlish. We need to ask two questions about this issue: firstly, do they speak English well? No, of course not, they would struggle to be understood in London, New York or Sydney. But was it a total waste of time for them to have made the effort to have learnt some English then? Of course not, their lives have been greatly enriched by their ability to speak English. Thus for many of these older Singaporeans, that is always a good reason to make some effort to learn English regardless of how good their English can be. There is another reason why my father has refused to learn English: he is terrified of being embarrassed when he makes a mistake when he speaks English - this is because he worked in a primary school as a teacher and most of the students there spoke better English than him so he felt he would lose face if he made a mistake in front of the students when trying to speak English. The irony was, if he refused to speak English, he would lose face anyway if the students assumed he was too uneducated to even put together a simple sentence in basic English. He was simply trading one form of judgment for another, neither of which resulted in a good outcome. Let me give you another analogy of how working class people use excuses to avoid doing something that would bring them net benefit even if they don't do it particularly well - my mother hated to do any form of exercise even though the doctor often told her that she needed to lose more weight. So her excuses were mostly associated with lacking self confidence, for example, the doctor suggested that swimming or if she found that too hard, simply walking around the shallow end of the pool in waist deep water was a great way to exercise. My mother refused to do that for two reasons: she didn't want anyone to see her in a swim suit and she was afraid people would laugh at her if they saw her trying to exercise. We suggested that she could get a swimming instructor to help her with the swimming and she retorted, what would be the point of that? I am never going to be a swimming champion, so why should I even try to learn to swim? Would she ever be any good at swimming? No, never but would doing the exercise be good for her health? Yes very much so, yet my mother shoved that into her huge blind spot and adamantly refused to do any kind of exercise. 

It is their unwillingness to try anything that frustrates me - when we try something and we don't know if we will succeed, we are taking a risk. Allow me to give you an example from something I did today, I am a big fan of the Ukrainian band Go_A and they made an appeal on Instagram. They asked for people who have been studying Ukrainian to respond and take part in a special documentary. Have I studied Ukrainian? Yes I have but it was mostly two years ago when I went to work in Kiev, I have not really kept it up. I still can understand a bit of course but it's not as good as my Spanish or Welsh. I have to admit, there was a moment of self-doubt: if I recorded a short video of myself speaking Ukrainian, would I even be understood? Would I mispronounced the words so badly or have a terrible accent to the point no one would have any clue what the hell I was trying to say? Would people watch my video and mock me for speaking the language so badly? But another part of me thought: meh what's the worst that can happen? After all, I said in the video, I speak a little Ukrainian and I'm learning. I never claimed for a moment that I was fluent in the language so I went ahead and recorded that video anyway. My parents would never dare to do something like that because of this fear of losing face, of people thinking that they are stupid and making fun of them. The reward for me in this project was simply proving to myself that I could script, rehearse and perform a short speech in Ukrainian within two hours flat and convince others that I can speak some Ukrainian. If I succeed, then I gain a lot of self-confidence in my ability to complete such a complex task under pressure. But if I fail, I can live with that. What bothers me is that my parents are often so afraid of failing they never even try, that's why they default to the position of "if I don't even bother trying, think of how much I would be saving by passing up on this challenge." But if that is their default position and they never ever try any new challenges, then how the heck would they ever improve themselves? The question I have is this: are my parents like this because of their working class mentality? Oh and Katya the lead singer from Go_A did say to me briefly at the concert, "Alex, thank you for your video." 

Before you accuse me of discriminating against working class people, allow me to explain my theory -when you are very poor, you are often forced to make rather poor decisions that richer people would never make - allow me to explain. Imagine if you had $20 left until your next pay day and you had to make that money last until the end of the week, you stumble upon gambling game where you very good chance of winning a thousand dollars. The game works like this: you pay $20 to toss a coin, you just have to guess which side of the coin it would land on: heads or tails. Get it right, you win a thousand dollars right there and then. Get it wrong, you lose your $20. Faced with those odds, the poor person would not gamble - they will simply spend that last $20 on food and essentials no matter how good the odds may be. They simply can't afford to lose, so they won't take that risk. A richer person however, would look at those odds and think, I'd take a chance and if I lose $20, it's no big deal as I have plenty more money in the bank. When my mother was young, she lived in abject poverty so this really affected her attitude towards spending money - hence when my aunt got into university back in the late 1960s, she was the only person in my extended family of that generation to go to university and it was a big deal back in those days. Instead of supporting my aunt's effort to get a degree, my mother thought it was a terrible idea because of the risk involved: so there was a possibility that my aunt could spend all that time and money at university and still fail her final exams. If that did happen, then that would be a total waste of all that time and money so by that token, according to my mother, my aunt would be better off cutting her losses and not bother with university at all as there was no guarantee that she would graduate. However, my mother failed to take into account of the fact that my aunt is actually really intelligent and there was really no question whether or not she would get through a degree programme - of course she did and with flying colours and that led to my aunt having a far more successful career than my mother who didn't go to university. However, my mother was acting like a very poor person refusing to spend her last $20 on a gambling game no matter how good the odds of winning may be. It was my mother's working class mindset that led to her poor judgment in this case - that experience with extreme poverty in her childhood had clouded her judgment. 

Hence if you repeat that kind of behaviour over and over again, you start to convince yourself that you are actually being very rational and sensible. - that this is the right thing to do and others are simply being reckless. Such decisions make complete sense in their heads given the constraints they have to face, but what they fail to take into consideration is the fact that other people who do not have to contend with the same constraints would make different decisions to get a better outcome. However, in order for a poor person to attain social mobility, they have got to learn to make decisions like a rich person - so staying with the example of my aunt going to university, it was the right decision to invest all that time and money in her further education, even if it did come with a certain amount of risk that she might not even make it through her course or her degree wouldn't give her a good return on her investment. Thus when poor people become so risk averse because they simply cannot afford to take any risks, they end up sacrificing any potential gains that come with these risks, such as in the case of my aunt pursuing a degree; it is a sad situation because poor people often deny themselves the social mobility they badly need because of this mindset of being too risk averse. They need to do something drastic like what my aunt did to try to achieve social mobility, it can usually take a generation for this mindset to change but what my aunt did was to skip a generation: she wasn't going to miss out on going to university and hope that her children will get those opportunities in the future, she was going to do what was right for her when she had the chance. It is ultimately quite sad that people like my parents justify their attitudes based on this 'survival mindset' which would make sense if they were living in extreme poverty (and to be fair, for a while, they did), but it is no longer a useful mindset to have once you move out of that state of poverty and instead, this can work against them and hold them back from progressing in life. What does frustrate me though is that lack of honesty on my parents' part - are they ever willing to be honest with themselves and at least acknowledge that they have made some poor decisions? Sure at times, life might force you into circumstances (like when I didn't do my homework), whereby you need to hope to get away with it; but surely it would be far more rational to put in the effort and hope to reap the rewards of having succeeded at the task? 

So there you go, that's it from me on this topic, what do you think? I think it's a bizarre situation as it is not like working class people don't want to take any risks, but it seems they always presume the worst when it comes to evaluating their chances, such as in the case of whether or not my aunt ought to get a degree or not. Why do you think working class people take that pessimistic stance and how does that affect their decision making process? How can working class people learn to handle the concept of 'risk vs reward'? Please do leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.