We need to scrap working class versus middle class thinking - Christa Ackroyd

You would be wrong. Museums and art galleries have been my favourite haunts for as long as I can remember. They always were and will continue to be my passion.

They make me stop, look, pause and think. As the world gets faster provide the perfect contemplative environment in which to simply stand and stare.

No matter where I go in the world, and I am lucky enough to have travelled the globe, the first thing I will research is the best museum.

Not for me lounging on a sun bed by the pool or sipping a cocktail by the bar. Yes it’s enjoyable for some, but I can last only a day at best before my natural restlessness kicks in and the need to explore takes over.

Give me a World Heritage site and I am happy. Give me an artefact I have never seen before and I am mesmerised. But it is not just antiquities which draw me in. Show me an old master or a modern piece of art and I stand in awe.

Tell me how people used to live and I am transported back there with them. But show me how we live now and I am just as fascinated. No matter where you are in the world relics from the past shine a light on what used to be.

They depict the aspirations and often the genius of those who came before and a show of respect from those who follow for all they lived through.

They also provide an exciting opportunity to see and learn at first hand that which cannot be found in text books, in classrooms or on TV programmes.

I have seen some incredible museums and art exhibitions that have changed my perspective on life and given me a glimpse into the past which has shaped my future.

From the cramped rooms of Anne Frank, to the horrors of Auschwitz, the ruins of the ancient world in Athens and Rome to the Pyramids of Giza and the forts and cities of India, to the art galleries of Florence, Paris and New York, and the captive townships of South Africa.

They have all enriched my life and quenched my thirst for learning.

But then they would do wouldn’t they? I am posh. (really?). The joys to be found in those hallowed halls are not for ‘poor’ people.

In fact worse still they can be alienating, unsettling places for those who don’t believe they should be there because they are not preserved, curated and open for the likes of them. And I have never heard such patronising, ridiculous and downright dangerous snobbish clap trap in my entire life.

I tell you what gets my goat. It is when middle class ‘experts’ not only reinvent and cement into modern day culture the class system while daring to tell us what is good for us.

Well I tell you what is good for us. Finding out for ourselves what we like, what makes us tick and where we belong. It helps us work out where we are going. And if we find that in a local museum all well and good.

This past week one of those experts whose name I will not bore you with has told us that schools should stop trips to museums and theatres because ‘working class’ pupils will not associate with them.

We should not have talk of jam or skiing trips in exam papers because some people might not have experienced what they are so won’t understand what the question is about. The world has truly gone mad.

When I was at school my books were about white middle class children called Janet and John. All my Enid Blyton stories centred around lashings of ginger beer, rich Uncles with private estates or schools where you actually lived, took tuck boxes and played lacrosse. And I never went skiing.

It was as far removed from my primary and comprehensive schooling as you could get. But did it damage me? Did I feel undermined? Of course not. Though I did ask my mum if I could go to boarding school, which by the way I would have hated. She of course laughed.

But did it mean I didn’t learn about my roots? Of course not. I learned about working class history, as our expert tells us we should, from right where I was, in inner city Bradford, which was awash with museums about our past and our heritage. And still is.

I haven’t researched this particular expert’s credentials but I suspect he is London based. If he bothered to set foot out of the hallowed corridors of power he walks amongst he might discover that most areas are well aware of their roots and they are proudly on show for all to see in the museums which celebrate them.

Let me jot down just a few that I visited as a youngster or have taken my children to completely free of charge . Because that’s another thing. Where else can you go which costs nothing? Where you can see and learn so much, no matter what you have in your pocket?

The industrial museum in Bradford is a joy. It has weaving looms and Jowett cars and the last trolley bus. Salts Mill stands as proud as the Piece Hall in Halifax as a testament to wool and cloth.

The coal mining museum near Wakefield proudly tells the story of a dark and dangerous world now resigned to history.

And the Royal Armouries goes back even further. Some of the best paintings in the land can be seen at Cartwright Hall or Leeds art gallery, the best sculptures at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Nip over the border and the International slavery museum in Liverpool is eye opening and again costs not one penny.

And the National Media Museum in Bradford, when it reopens, will bring us bang up to day with technology from its infancy to the internet.

I could fill three columns with all I have seen, all I want to see and all that is available to us all without even setting foot in the capital where so much crazy luddite thinking emanates from, though it has some pretty great museums too, which may I remind the aforementioned education expert that unlike football clubs which he suggests would be better suited for school trips, many of them cost nothing there either.

Far from breaking working class ties this kind of thinking simply pigeon holes us all and keeps us from looking upwards and outwards.

Was I working class? No, my dad was a police officer. Was his dad working class? Yes he was. He left school at 14 and worked in a mill until knowledge and a passion for learning took him all over the world selling the wool he had once weaved. Because no one told him he couldn’t.

The sooner we scrap working class versus middle class thinking the better. As for the experts who tell us what we should learn and how, the sooner the are consigned to history as museum pieces the better.

Only who would have them? They would simply be deemed too dull to be worthy of a second glance.