Class - are you born with it?

Definition of "class"

the system of ordering a society in which people are divided into sets based on perceived social or economic status.

"people who are socially disenfranchised by class"

Recently a product was profiled as something designed for upper class clientele but marketed to all. I quipped about how convenient it is to buy a class for yourself through that product. Which may be interpreted as - "the class shouldn't be bought". Growing up in the class system of India, my brain is  trained to think that you are born within a certain class. For the most part it is true, but not quite.

Growing up I could see the difference in the way things are done in each household. Some families had specific traditions and processes that were followed in day-to-day life. Cooking processes, personal hygiene, caring for babies, way of conversation, being respectful towards others, everything. I was in awe of certain families, that showed higher level of thought behind each action. Financially stable families that could afford spending time cultivating certain standards of life for their little ones  came across as more sophisticated compared to those that were struggling to survive and didn't have time to think about anything else.

The royals are considered the epitome of class by many - is it the financial status...? Or is it because they develop their personality, thought processes and behaviors to influence the populace. I think the later.

You need not be born in an upper class family to be considered upper class, but you do need to put in many years of learning and training to earn the class. If you are born in an upper class family, you have a higher probability of starting early, and earning the label earlier in your life. Class is nothing but samskaras. And there is nothing wrong with developing classy behavior as long as you don't discriminate. Actually learning to not discriminate would be a part of classy behavior as well.

Learning - as I know it

My social feed is often filled with my college-age nephews and nieces making fun of colleges, lectures and boredom that comes with it. My 6 year old complains that his school is too long now that he switched to a full school-day schedule. My 12 year old cannot talk enough about how he only looks forward to school for the time he spends with his friends before, after and in-between his classes. 

Why?
Because most people don't like to be told stuff, they like to figure out. There is a great sense of achievement in learning something new through our own thoughts and calculations that we never knew before. The joy of finding answers for yourself is up there on the same level as the joy of giving birth. I am going a bit too far on that one, but its high up. 

One might argue that the self-motivated learning will be highly imbalanced. Everyone will just study art and music and no math. But the efforts of living life should balance everything out. No matter what you are interested in learning, you will end up learning other subjects at the same time and not because they are being taught but because you want to learn. 

Think about art for instance. A person learning to draw needs to understand the scale of his object relative to the canvas or relative to the individual pieces of that object. There is calculation involved. When you are learning to draw you would want to learn to calculate the relative dimensions to get the right effect. 

Think about cooking. When you are learning to cook, you may want to understand the effect of temperature on individual ingredients so you can pick the right ingredients for a certain type of dish. There is your science.

I have heard that montessori schools practice similar principles. Don't know a lot about that other than Montessori schools are way too expensive!!! 

How can I as an individual flip this around and get my kids to experience the joy of learning? Clearly they are not experiencing it right now!!