The law is riddled with classy types, yet class is rarely mentioned ... A taboo topic at law school ... Law and privilege go hand in hand ... Barely Legal wants to talk about it because it could be affecting his legal education
I recently floated the topic of high school education with my law student peers. With a lifted brow an acquaintance promptly asked me, "public or private"?
It's an odd question. Why ask about that aspect first? I'm not adverse to the discussion, but I was interested in what we were in fact discussing. It felt like we were on the cusp of talking about class - not about what goes on in the classroom, but class distinctions.
I said, "public", and this was met with both grimaces and sympathy. To put this another way, the tone of the responses was either: (a) good on you for clawing your way up and out of a public education system akin to the Hunger Games - BTW, did you learn to knife-fight there? (b) you poor thing.
I very much enjoyed my public school and am quite keen to let people know. That prompted, from some of my privately educated class mates, a burst of faux self-deprecation, as though to assure me I wasn't a complete outcast.
Class participation
Class is a topic generally avoided by law students. It may be uttered in hushed tones in college corridors, but never spoken too loudly.
A particularly progressive or attentive professor may encourage us, with a wry smile, to consider class before writing our essays. Yet, no one ever does, as if afraid of what we may find lurking beneath the surface.
Class and school background rarely come up in discussions, as though by deliberate omission.
Public or private?
My parents' generation pat themselves on the back for removing class and "class warfare" from Australia (and its universities), yet my generation continues to struggle with the fact that the "c" word remains, and so do class differences and disadvantages.
It matters because it affects the way I connect to my education as a lawyer. If I'm surrounded at law school by people with a "special" background, it will influence the lens through which my legal education is conducted.
Why has class become a conversational graveyard, the law school representing one particularly ornate tombstone? Why has the "c" word, as Tim Winton asked, become "taboo"?
The answer, I suspect, lies in law students' insecurity about their futures.
You don't have to be a raging pinko to acknowledge that the majority of students who make it into Australia's best law schools, like mine, come from privileged families or from places of means.
Rightly or wrongly, there is a preconception (which in my opinion is correct) that it is harder to get into a premium law school from a public high school in Frankston than it is from a diamond encrusted college on the North Shore.
How does this gel with the requirement that merit is king? It tends to give the impression that one student has had to work harder to get a foot in the door, while another merely has to drift into the right place.
The attempt to un-think the imbalance leads to class not being discussed openly. In MHO this does a disservice to the law, which has class problems of its own.
Our collective thinking about this has been redacted. Perhaps it would easier if I just said I'm a private school boy. Everyone then would feel more secure.