One of the games that British people can play better than anyone else in the world is using everyday events to make subtle-but-vital distinctions about class. It’s a good game to watch on the almost entirely middle-class medium that is education Twitter. Take discussions about sport, for instance. There are a few of us who enjoy breaking away from endless arguments about the College of Teaching to discuss football on Saturdays. But England rugby games - involving an altogether more gentlemanly pursuit - get much more traffic.
But the biggest divide - in society, in politics and on Twitter - is over that other Saturday clash of the heavyweights: Strictly Come Dancing vs The X Factor.
The former is the safe, impeccably middle-class show. The music is middle-of-the-road, the celebrities are respectable, and the crowd is polite. Politicians flock (or waltz?) towards it, chasing that crucial demographic (or, in the case of Ed Balls, shaking their tailfeather at it). And Twitter teachers love it.
The X Factor is exactly the opposite. It’s big, and it’s brassy. It’s interspersed with sponsorship messages and adverts. The contestants are - not to put too fine a point on it - more working-class. The audience howl their approval or disagreements. And although Gordon Brown made one (and memorably bad) appearance a few years ago, in general it is a zone where Westminster - and my timeline on Twitter - fears to tread.
And so, in a rare occurrence, I find myself holding a minority view - among education peers - in my love of the show, as I revel in every journey made by a contestant amid the tragic life stories that seem to befall them with astounding regularity. Simple viewing pleasures aside, I also think the shows are valuable for schools to use in activities.
The main lesson for me is in one of the other elements that sets the shows apart - their attitude to hard work and effort, or “grit and resilience”, to coin a phrase. The focus of all the clips from Strictly is on the extent of the practice the celebrities do every week. On The X Factor, the theme is much more about fame and glory falling easily into the lap of the winner.
But the irony, of course, is that the X Factor winner probably does more training and practice than the Strictly champion, as anyone who recalls the early One Direction band member auditions, compared with the final product, will be aware.
For a depressing reason, the X Factor producers don’t think such a message is appealing to their audience. But schools know that it is important, and the show provides a way to push it.
It might not have the cachet with some voters that rugby does (a sport that, perhaps coincidentally, was one of the biggest recipients of the character grants scheme from the Department for Education last year). But emphasising the training and practice that go into Strictly and The X Factor is worth making a song and dance about.
Jonathan Simons is a former head of education in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit under Gordon Brown and David Cameron
