Letter: It's wrong to blame your home situation for lack of achievement in life

During my generation’s early years the main focus of primary schooling was to help us to learn to read, spell, write, and understand arithmetic. We were told that the ability to read would allow us to do so much more.

There is no doubt that home life was a major factor regardless of the work undertaken by parents.

My mother was a machinist in a linen factory and quite often the factory owner would bring work to our home for my mother to complete at home in our kitchen.

The most I saw of my father was at Sunday lunch. My sisters and I knew we were loved even though we had few clothes. We were given an upbringing that prepared us for life away from our parents. My father worked all hours in the building sector.

We were taught to do household tasks like sewing on buttons and adjusting hems and laundry and ironing. One after the other we were given responsibility for cooking and preparing the evening meal which nearly always included potatoes.

Ready meals from a shop were not available and were not needed.

Of course it was always a treat to have fish and chips occasionally, either home made or the local chippy. The chippy we liked was owned and run by an Italian war refugee family.

Very often myself and neighbouring friends would meet at the local river to swim and have a wash.

Sometimes I was invited to a friend’s house to share their evening meal, at times reciprocated by my mother. If we got wet on the way home from school it was common for a neighbour to lend us dry clothes while our own was put on a drying rack in front of the fire to dry.

I think we were all in receipt of free school dinner tickets.

Most important was that we understood the value of primary education. It was instilled in us that if we learned the basic elementary skills we could accomplish whatever we set our minds to.

For some it was vocational subjects in engineering, and building skills. For others it was to be secretarial training in bookkeeping, shorthand and typing. And apprenticeships. Others choose to undertake university studies.

At least one, if not two, of my classmates studied to become doctors, others became teachers, bus drivers or nurses. After time, three of my classmates became ministers of religion.

Your background and limited home resources is no barrier to success. The only block to you flying high is your own inertia. The politicians are not doing you any favour by suggesting your background and lack of family income is the reason for your situation.

In NI, the talk of working class is an imported British term, in my opinion. I never heard the term used until 1978 when it was used by politicians.

L Wallace, Newtownards