[hyperbovine]

Funny, that sounds like a recipe for the sort of social structure they were trying to break free of in colonial England. Just goes to show how 200 years of politicking and beatification has distorted the images of the founding fathers.

[dillydally]

No, in England you'd study whatever your father studied. If he was a blacksmith, you were a blacksmith. If he was an aristocrat, you were an aristocrat.

What Adams is talking about is quite different.

[saulhoward]

> in England you'd study whatever your father studied. If he was a blacksmith, you were a blacksmith

The idea that England had (and has) no social mobility is quite wrong. People have been climbing the social ladder since long before the Industrial Revolution.

It may help you in some ways to think of the new America as opposed to everything Britain stood for, but I think that is mostly incorrect. The philosophies and values of the Age of Enlightenment came from a long history of European thought. America was far closer to a young son continuing and realising the father's long held hopes and ideas with fresh blood and the chance to start on its own feet.

[cstross]

Nonsense.

The UK had plenty of social mobility from the late 18th century onwards -- it's just that if you made it good, you did your damndest to copy the social manners and graces of your peers and make it look as if your family had always been well-off. And part of that process entailed hiding your humble roots. Hence the illusion of class immobility.

[eru]

Wasn't England starting to industrialize around that time? They kicked off the biggest change in human life ever. (Or perhaps the second biggest. Agriculture was pretty big, too.