A False and a Pernicious Choice

It has been a rather bitter sweet couple of weeks. Recently I had a Facebook contact from an ex-pupil of mine – now a highly successful administrator in the health service. She was a high flying school girl and clearly destined for great things and it was a delight to hear her news. She had simply stumbled across my name on the social networking site and made contact after all these years. I'm not a huge user of social networking sites but I wasn't surprised - it's not an unusual occurrence. As is the case with social networking  her initial contact with me generated others – her friends and my ex-pupils wanted to make contact also. And over the last week or so I've had over a hundred Facebook contacts and emails from all over the world and although I'm not a fan of Facebook it is nice to hear how these people, many of whom are now grandparents themselves, are doing as adults.  I can’t deny that when I read some of the lovely comments and memories that they have of their time with me, it is very gratifying and humbling.

That was the sweet part of the past few days. But it all turned rather bitter at the end of this week when the current Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, announced that she would be allowing the expansion of a grammar school in Kent. For the latter half of the twentieth century grammar schools (which for those unfamiliar with British education are based upon selection of children at 11) have been limited, unable to expand or be newly created. They still survive in isolated pockets throughout the country because no party, unfortunately, has had the political will to scrap them, so sensitive are they in the national psyche. One of the areas of the country where they are most prevalent is the county of Kent and it is in Kent that an existing school in Sevenoaks has been allowed to expand. One might think this is a small issue but for observers like supporter Phillip Bicknell (see below) or opponents like me the writing is on the wall; although Morgan claims this is a one off decision to respond to a particular situation the reality is that grammar schools are back!

Phillip Bicknell, a Tory councillor and spokesman on education commented on the grammar schools announcement that: “We are trying to provide all of the residents with choice, so they can choose what school they think is best for their children.” But, it never seemed to occur to this gentleman or to Nicky Morgan, that this is a false and a pernicious choice - for selection, by definition, immediately excludes the majority from that very choice. Parents might desire to choose to send their children to a grammar school but  if the child doesn't pass the selection process then the choice is invalid. There is no such parental choice for the majority of the population who will be excluded from this "choice" because their children are simply not bright enough. Put crudely if you have a bright child then you have a choice - if you don't then there is no such option. For the whole of my life - and I'm past 70 - I have wrestled with this one. What is so difficult for Tories and grammar school supporters to understand in this simple bit of logic? I can only presume that Tories are really not very bright – maybe it’s the result of attending a grammar school themselves!

 

Our Education Minister Nicky Morgan 

Secondly, I wonder, why oh why do people (the electorate) in various parts of the country - Kent, Trafford etc. consistently vote for or accept some form of selection in their area when the majority of the local population are by definition excluded from this alleged "choice" or the benefits that might accrue? Indeed, they will be actively disadvantaged since the majority of the children in the area will have to go to schools which, are by definition, deemed inferior (or maybe, actually, are inferior) since they do not have "the brightest" on their rolls and will not attract what is often termed in relation to grammars "the best teachers". The nearest analogy I can find is of  a “turkey voting for Christmas"  - voting for something that is very likely to disadvantage their own children. For every child who passes the test and therefore “benefits” from the grammar school education at, least three and probably more will be offered something that is either inferior as a matter of fact (because, for example, they might not be offered the range of academic subjects so prized in our UK system) or by default – because our class ridden society prizes for its “top jobs” and career prospects those with this academic golden key. Those not passing the exam will go to schools which are by definition for the less able. It is a socially divisive policy. I can only assume that the the electorate within these areas who still want to keep grammar school and selection at 11 are no more than just aspirational voters.

And thirdly, whilst I can, with difficulty, accept that there were (are?) maybe some outstanding grammar schools whose academic emphasis and strict selection really did/does benefit some children and the "hot house atmosphere" and selection process could, just possibly, be justified because of the outstanding importance to the national interest the reality is, as any (even cursory) study of grammar schools will prove, very different. Their history and their exam results show that bearing in mind the alleged greater "ability" of the intake the end results were at best average and almost certainly nothing to crow about. This was made clear to me couple of years ago. At the request of an elderly friend, I did little research into her ex-grammar school. She attended the school in the early 1950’s the very zenith of the grammar school age. I found records of the school, which was locally very well thought of. I looked at the prize days and examination results. The results were stunningly poor bearing in mind the school was taking the “best” in the area. Out of an annual intake of between 100 and 110 per year only some 40% of pupils were passing more than 2 GCE O levels. Year after year it was the same. The children getting the prizes for the best exam results were passing 4 or at the most 5 GCE O levels – and only an absolute maximum of 15% of the total intake ever got 4 or 5 O levels. If OFSTED  judged these results today the schools would be judged abject failures. I was so staggered with the results – not at all what I had expected - that I looked at other grammar schools of the time. The results were consistent across the country. Of course, one came across the occasional exception to that rule – places like Manchester or Bradford Grammar who did indeed turn out some very high performing pupils. But these were definitely the exception and rare indeed. The evidence was and is clear grammar schools do not guarantee academic success – in fact they perform poorly given the raw material they are given. But they do bestow social benefits, contacts and entry to better careers.

There is another dimension.If one takes Kent for example, an area that retains a significant number of grammar schools the effect on the rest of the school population is marked: Poor or less able (for that read “average”) children in selective Kent – i.e. the vast majority - do far worse at GCSE than in areas of comprehensive schools (i.e.  non-selective selective). It is the same in other areas. Where my granddaughters live in Trafford, Manchester, the impact of a number of highly selective grammar schools means that all the other secondary schools are disadvantaged, for the most able have already been creamed off. The whole secondary education  sphere there is skewed giving huge advantage to the relatively few bright children attending the selective schools and almost universally condemning the vast majority average and below to an inferior system. It leaves other schools less able to run the courses, attract the staff that will allow the school to flourish and consequently denies children in those schools the opportunity to reach the highest levels of attainment and qualification. My eldest granddaughter has to travel out of Trafford for her secondary education to a school and an area were all abilities are catered for equally in the same school.

Don’t get me wrong. I'm not against selection. Children, like the rest of us, are all different – for some a highly academic education will be appropriate for others less so. But to actually set up special, separate schools for each which then sets (literally in stone – the school building) a child’s future and sets them apart from others is highly divisive and social engineering at its most crude. It is pandering to the basest instincts in mankind. In a society already widely acknowledged to be one of the most unequal in the developed world the new initiative is setting in stone one of the main drivers of inequality. Supporters of grammar schools claim that they help to bridge the gap and provide an avenue for poor, able children to be socially mobile. There is clearly an element of truth in this – but only for a very tiny few. As this week's Guardian commented grammar schools: “.... help only a minuscule number of economically disadvantaged children, while perpetuating social disadvantage for the rest. They make actual society more like the entirely imaginary society that Conservatives so ardently cleave to, in which poor people are thick and rich people are clever”. Children, like adults, can of course never be equal; we are all born with different abilities, aptitudes and backgrounds. No government can completely eradicate this. But what we can do is try to ensure that all children start from the most level playing field possible – not give some a further “leg up” simply because they are able to pass a test at 11. To use a horse racing or a golf metaphor in those pursuits we handicap the best horses, riders or golfers to try to ensure that when the race or round of golf takes place everyone starts as equal as possible and has a fair chance of being the eventual victor. In our English education system we do exactly the opposite. Some children because of their genetic inheritance or good fortune of parents and upbringing start the education and life race with a huge natural, in-built advantage over the majority - the ones who are average or just  not so bright, or whose parents are not very bright or are poor and so on. And what does the Tory party and much of the electorate in places like Kent and other selective school areas decide is a fair response to this situation? It's obvious - give the naturally gifted and fortunate a special school, with the best curriculum, teachers and resources. "It's obviously for the best" they proclaim, keeping a straight face as they say it. Just like the awful cosmetic advert says you deserve this preferential treatment "because you're worth it". And we wonder why inequality grows? I call it obscene.

In this country, both historically and today we value above all things academic ability. Our private and existing grammar schools, be they Eton or more humble institutions, emphasise the traditional academic curriculum. Our most prestigious universities reflect this. The result, the vast majority of those who succeed in this system – either through ability or money – take “top jobs” – and as a society we perceive “top jobs” as being of a certain kind – in the City, in law, in medicine etc. We do not value, in the same way, other vocations: engineering and the like. It is the very root of inequality and puts us internationally at a disadvantage for our brightest and best rarely go into careers which make a huge difference to the economy (unlike , say Germany); they go into the law or the City and the like - they do not become the scientists and engineers for these careers are less highly prized and consequently less well rewarded. Indeed only this week the government sponsored school inspection service OFSTED complained bitterly about the low level opportunities offered to young people  via training and apprenticeships saying that such courses gave  only low level skills and were simply a way of supplying cheap labour. And this is the rub - we do not value all skills and learning equally. In contemporary Briatain, as always, academic prowess rules! As Michelle Hanson commented in this week's Guardian: "........the government hasn't grasped what a proper apprenticeship is, especially if it involves practical skills. To it, and the Department for Education, “practical” seems to mean “thick”. Hanson went on: "....a Somerset school that had a farm taught agricultural courses. But the DfE has decided that no such courses shall count in the league tables. They are not academic or “rigorous” enough. A BTec level 2 in agriculture counts for nothing. So this excellent school has plunged down the tables.....our  leaders regarding anyone with practical skills as a comparative dimwit." In 2002 Professor Alan Smithers wrote of the ".....damaging gulf between the academic and vocational" In the rest of Europe ".....nursery teachers, technicians, plumbers, builders, craftspeople and farmers are well trained, respected and have proper careers. Here, they are lesser beings, who ought to use the back door. Why bother to train them properly? It’s so expensive......Anyway, foreign plumbers, nurses, builders and other practical creatures are cheaper, because we don’t have to train them...". It is not too expensive, however, to fund a new Grammar school for the academic elite.

Nye Bevan famously said: “We could manage to survive without money changers, lawyers and stockbrokers. We should find it harder to do without miners, steel workers and those who cultivate the land” and I would add to that something which I have always fervently believed: the wealth and the standing of our society is built, and has always been built, upon the backs, the industry, the goodwill and the brain power of the ordinary man and woman, the ordinary worker, the average and below average – not the fewer than 25% who comprised the private and grammar school elite. My much loved aunt used to put it another way when she frequently said "England's bread hangs by Lancashire's thread". A humble weaver in a cotton mill all her life she knew that it was on her back, hard work, weaving skills and care that England's cotton industry thrived - not on the dealers in stocks and shares or the City traders or the bankers or the lawyers or the oh so clever toffs. She was right and nothing has changed. She was just " factory fodder" - the average, the ordinary, her talents and industry not valued by the mill owners or the shareholders or the City. She knew "nothing" because she had no academic  certificates or valued qualifications. Like millions of others she was invisible to those in power - the products of the private schools and grammar schools.

John Newsome, in his great 1960s report on secondary schooling, "Half our Future" - and from which I directly benefited (see below) - so rightly said they, the average and below average, are at least half our future and in having a selective education system involving grammar schools we are casting them aside and wasting their talents and industry. Newsome stated the blindingly obvious that most of the nation’s human resources were being wasted by condemning them to an inferior education. They are sacrificed at the altar of the few. This pernicious doctrine was further highlighted in today’s Guardian when it commented  ruefully: “Why can’t the champions of grammar schools see how narcissistic and patronising this attitude is? It assumes that only very special people deserve entry into the hallowed halls of the professional class – people who have passed a written test proving themselves to be worthy of grooming for social-mobility greatness. People who have intelligence, people who have the nascent potential to be a little bit more like themselves. It’s the essence of Conservatism, this idea that almost everyone in life gets what they deserve.....”

I could go on and on and on. When I read this latest Tory proposal regarding grammar school expansion I inwardly wept. It made a nonsense of all the kind comments that I had received on Facebook and in emails from former pupils. How out of step I  had been to have had all those ideals that I should work for all the children not just the brightest and best as I stood each day in front of a class. "What a quaint old fashioned idea to believe in equality and fairness" Nicky Morgan seemed to be whispering in my ear as I read of her announcement and of the glee of the Tory party and their followers. I felt betrayed by what I hoped our society might be about. In these days when inequality within society is acknowledged by all parties  we have a government who is prepared to do this and worse, we have a nation where so many people up and down the country tacitly approve it by sending their children to these divisive schools. I am ashamed of my country this weekend.

I wouldn't mind, however, if testing and selection at 11 was really justified. Educational and psychological research, however, is replete with incontrovertible evidence that it simply doesn't work. Selection at 11 based upon IQ tests and the like (and further skewed too often, with specific coaching to pass the tests) is consistently shown to be an unreliable indicator of ability or of future success. The nation is awash with people holding high positions in industry, commerce, academia and indeed government  who "failed" their 11+ exam. I do not for one minute put myself into that category but my own story to a degree mirrors this truth.

For over 40 years I worked in the classroom. I went into teaching for many reasons -  interest, security of employment, simple desire to be a teacher and thus feel that I had progressed into something better than I might have been......a whole host of reasons, some morally supportable others less altruistic. But, from day one it was with a desire to try to ensure that I would give every child that I taught something that I did not have in quite such amounts: a chance to be better  as a right not just as a piece of good fortune. I “failed” my 11+ - every child took it in those days -and went, as a result, to a tough secondary modern school (even by the standards of the day in the 1950s). Today, Fishwick Secondary Modern  would undeniably be called a sink school. Out of my class of 53 boys at the junior school I attended (St. Matthews in Preston) just 3 boys went to grammar school: Billy Masheter, Barry Alston and Brian Rigby. I didn't feel  bitter or resentful that was just how it was. I was going to Fishwick a school like all the others  in  a Lancashire mill town whose sole purpose to turn out “factory fodder” for the town's cotton mills and factories. But I was lucky. In my very last year at secondary school  the school (because of the growing awareness of the national waste of talent caused by grammar schools and which was made manifest in John Newsome's 1963“Half our Future”) things for me changed. I was doubly lucky, too, because a new head teacher arrived just at that point and the school changed changed tack.  In the very last week of the summer term, with no qualifications (we didn't take tests as we were deemed incapable of passing them for we had failed the 11+ four years before) and  just as we were about begin the search for a factory job  my school began allowing children to stay on for an extra year. We were to be allowed, if we wished, to study for and attempt the very exams that the grammar school boys and girls had been working for for the past 4 years; exams previously reserved only “more able” which at 11 I had been told I was not. With my parent’s support I “stayed on”.  At the end of that year I took four GCE O levels and passed them all – the local grammar school turned out my ex-junior school friends with 5 GCEs after 5 years of “hot house” academic education. So what was the separation at 11+ all about then? Suddenly, with my GCE O levels I was no longer factory fodder – other opportunities arose - opportunities that had always been there for Billy, Barry and Brian. I just was lucky. Had I been born just a few months earlier and therefore in a different school year group then I would not have had that chance. I would have been “factory fodder” and had a very, very different life. That is the price of the inequality generated by such things as grammar schools. Of course, those who were lucky enough to attend grammar schools are generally (although, thank goodness, not always) their greatest supporters. Well, to repeat the famous words of Mandy Rice Davies in the famous Profumo scandal case of the early 60s “They would wouldn’t they”. Supporters also say – and amazingly they do it without smiling or seeing any irony in it – grammar schools are so good that they want them for everybody. Well we’d all vote for that. But these oh so bright ex-grammar school pupils are, it seems, incapable of realising that the whole essence of a grammar school is that it only takes the brightest as defined by  a test to test the brightest.  It cannot be for everybody. It is selective. If you make it non-selective and let everybody in then it ceases to be what it is It’s a kind of oxymoron. I wonder what it is that these people find so hard to understand?

When I began teaching – and I suppose for the next forty years - if I had an ideal, an aspiration, a fundamental principle that guided my work it was that I did not believe it was right that other children should have to rely on luck as I had. A child born with the genetic inheritance and upbringing that ensures that he or she is “bright” already has a huge advantage in education, career and indeed life over the average and not so bright. I saw that fact of life every single day in my classroom and my school. I tried to drive that bright child even further but never, I hoped, to the disadvantage of the rest. I saw it as my professional and moral obligation not to treat children equally in the sense of the same but to treat children as individuals - each according to his need. This week’s government announcement makes me believe that my altruistic desire, my professional belief, my moral idealism or maybe it was just my naivety was and is grossly misplaced. It would get would get short shrift in 2015 Tory Kent and other such places. Again, I say, I am ashamed today of my country, my government and sadly ashamed of much of the population who support this move. It is a commonly held belief and has been for generations amongst politicians of all parties that Winston Churchill was absolutely right in his analysis of the British electorate at the end of the 2nd World War and when he had just lost the General Election. "The British electorate" he said "vote with their pockets not with their minds" – they do not have ideals he suggested, they vote only for themselves. So true. Despite the fact that only a small proportion of the electorate will benefit from grammar schools people still accept them and want them – the greed factor kicks in. “I want some of that”  they cry even though three quarters of them at least are certain not to be selected and will almost certainly  positively disadvantaged  (or at least their children will) by its introduction. It just looks like a good bargain – they fail to realise, however, that most of them will never reap its benefit. It's the educational equivalent of the lottery ticket. Someone many years ago said to me “Buying a lottery ticket is simply a tax on the stupid. The people that buy one would, in the end, gain far more if they paid instead an extra pound each week on their income tax – they'd get better roads or health provision etc. But they prefer to buy a lottery ticket even though they know that they are virtually certain of not winning and gaining absolutely no benefit for their hard earned money goes to the lottery winner.”  Voting for or supporting grammar schools is exactly the same.

When defending grammar schools supporters usually base their arguments around three areas: parental choice, which I have already mentioned, and either (or both) "wanting the best for their child" or "it's  a natural thing,it will always happen, and people should be able to spend their money and live their lives as they want to - the state shouldn't dictate how we live ". Well, I can see the attraction of both arguments except that I guess that "wanting the best for my child" is exactly the argument that virtually all of the current wave of refugees would use as they cross Europe from war torn or less desirable lands to seek a better life for their family in northern Europe. Whatever one's views on that issue current Tory policy, the anxious and inflammatory speeches at the  recent Tory conference and in the Tory press, and the Prime Minister's line suggest that "wanting the best for their child" is not a valid excuse for giving asylum. This privilege of taking action to do the best for one's child is, it seems, only to be extended to certain people and not to others: wanting the best for ones child is justified if you are  a grammar school supporter but not so if you are a refugee. And the second point? Well, that really does open a can of worms! But in short, allowing something to happen - in this case selection in schools - because it is a "natural thing" and therefore could not or should not be stopped  should perhaps be applied to other spheres. Man has murdered since the time of Cain and Abel - it has always been part of mankind's story, so why not simply allow it rather than waste money on costly police forces or prisons? Every day thousands of motorists are caught speeding and are penalised - maybe we should do away with speed limits - I speed and probably you do too, so what is the justification using Tory logic, of having laws to prevent it. I think the point is made - at least to any reasonably aware person,  but maybe the term "reasonable"  by definition precludes supporters of grammar schools. "Grammar school supporter" and "reasonable" - another oxymoron?

I will end - you will be pleased to know - with four final thoughts. Firstly, a long remembered night. About twenty years ago my son was at university – Loughborough University. It is a very well thought of institution and academically high on the list. Although it offers courses in every sort of subject it is especially well known for its emphasis on sport. It is an Olympic training centre for athletes, many international rugby players, swimmers or cricketers etc. are ex-Loughborough students. Academic requirements are high but so, too, is sporting prowess and it is rare to find a student there  - whatever he or she is studying - who is not a sportsman or woman to a high standard. They have usually played representatively for their sport. My son studied maths but he was also a talented footballer, who had played for Nottinghamshire, had trials for England schoolboys and had played for Notts County a local  professional club. Whenever one visited the university its vast sports facilities were always in use. It was a joy to see; this was not just the academic cream of the country but also the young sporting cream of the nation. I remember one summer evening driving up to the University. Adjacent is a large housing estate. Many thousands of people live there. It is not the worst place in the world but is a bleak urban landscape. The schools there are tough and many of the children challenging to say the least. Petty crime, drugs and antisocial behaviour was and is a continuing problem. As I drove I noticed the many teenagers standing around on the street or idly kicking a ball, on the pavement. Bored and potentially problems – one could see how petty vandalism, drugs and minor crime could develop – young men and women with nothing to do. As I got to the end of the road – there was the University, its vast playing fields and sports facilities lit up with pitch side lighting. All the fields and tracks filled with the students actively engaged and involved in these superb sporting facilities. It was wonderful to behold and I thought how lucky my son and his compatriots were to have all this. But another thought entered my head too. As I drove past that group of youngsters sitting on the pavement and I looked at the students on the playing fields, the nation’s brightest and best, all  lucky enough to be born bright, who had had numerous other advantages along the way and who were now given all this and the words from St Matthew came to me: “For whoever has, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whoever has not, from him shall be taken away even that he has”. I know that I have taken that quote out of context but it sums up the reintroduction of  grammar schools.

My second thought is something that my favourite writer and historian, Tony Judt said (See  http://remarque.as.nyu.edu/object/io_1256242927496.html ) in his last lecture before he tragically died of motor neurone disease. I defy anyone to watch it and not be terribly, terribly humbled and to go to bed thinking about it. Judt was talking about how in our modern world we have forgotten why we need certain things for the common good. He talked about what he called the paradox the welfare state and all that went with it – notions of education, health provision and the like, equality and fairness and provision of the weakest and the ordinary. He said: “The paradox of the welfare state and indeed of all the social democratic (and Christian Democratic) states of Europe, was quite simply that their success would over time undermine their appeal. The generation that remembered the 1930s was understandably the most committed to preserving institutions and systems of taxation, social service, and public provision that they saw as bulwarks against a return to the horrors of the past. But their successors.......began to forget why they had sought such security in the first place....... By the late 1970s ...such considerations were increasingly neglected. Starting with the tax and employment reforms of the Thatcher-Reagan years, and followed in short order by deregulation of the financial sector, inequality has once again become an issue in Western society. After notably diminishing from the 1910s through the 1960s, the inequality index has steadily grown over the course of the past three decades.....” . He was not wrong and the terrifying thing – at least for me – is that we are all part of  this paradox - every one of us, I believe. I might have all these moral scruples and high ideals about schools and children, I might berate those who support grammar schools or pay for their child’s education or extra tuition but in the end, individually and as  society, we have learned the lesson that Thatcher and her ilk taught us: that the world is a market place and anything can be bought - education, health provision, life chances and a myriad of other wants. Everything including our ideals and most hard fought for beliefs has a price. It is what philosopher Michael Sandel referred to in his book “What Money Can’t Buy – the Moral Limits of the Markets”  except that as Sandel showed everything can now, it seems, be bought and sold. So to my utter shame I can criticise but at the same time admit that when push comes to shove I too will pay for quick access to health services, to give me preferential treatment over others  to ease the pain in my back (see previous blog). We have all become a little more morally bankrupt – and I am ashamed of what our society and what I have become. Judt was exactly right – we have all forgotten why we wanted these these social and educational benefits in the first place.

The return of grammar schools is yet another nail in the coffin of society's individual and corporate willingness to act for the common good, the moral good. It increasingly sidelines any aspirations we might have for fairness, equality or justice. It is Judt’s paradox in perfection. We've forgotten that in the 1960s Newsome in the UK and other educationalists and politicians woke up to the fact that half of the nation’s talent was going down the proverbial drain and the nation needed them. We are so comfortable and so selfish that that is all history. "Hey!" we subconsciously say to ourselves "Let’s  not bother about it we think. Let’s vote for our own selfish aspirations. My kid might get into a grammar school, in fact I’ll make sure they do I'm rich enough to pay for private tuition to make sure they are drilled to pass the test - and to hell with the fact that means that over three other kids are actually disadvantaged in their education and life chances. That’s life – they should get richer parents! Get over it".

Thirdly, and in a sad way following from the last, let us try a little word substitution. How about substituting "hospital" for "school"  so that we discuss merits of selective hospitals rather than selective schools. Suppose that some right wing government seized power. Given the present situation this might come sooner than one might imagine. But let us suppose that this government looked at the population, its needs, the costs of running a welfare state etc. and decided that great changes had to be made. Indeed, as I write this I am thinking we are already there with this grammar school announcement, and with the continuing privatisation/austerity measures being imposed on our health service, our justice system and our social care provision. And let us further suppose that this government decided that it would be in the nation's interest to have a two track health system (indeed, in many ways we already have  this). So, the government announce that from then on all children aged (say) 11 will be tested for health, genetic make up and family background. Those found to be genetically "sound", of good "stock" and with a very healthy track record, and who are supported by wise, well off parents who ensure good diets etc. shall be "selected" and offered the choice of de-luxe health care in the best hospitals and under the care of the best doctors. Of course these already healthy, genetically well endowed and well cared for children would, one assumes, not need to call on health care provision  too often since they are inherently  healthy and well cared for. So despite the costs of this super health care to which they were entitled, the end result might be economically sound. And of course, there would be another, perhaps unspoken benefit - like Nazi Germany we would, by default, be developing a super breed; clearly, the government might say, in the interest of the nation - the race. But of course, there is another side to this dystopian  future: namely that those deemed to be not "super beings" - the unselected,  vast majority, the weak, the ailing, the less able, the ordinary, the average then they would suffer with inferior health provision for they are not selected or offered the "choice", the de-luxe service; and in any case, they are "inferior" by definition the selection process confirms that and so not fitted for inclusion. For these, the majority, a cheap, basic, emergency only provision would be all that was necessary for their needs are less pressing and ultimately they are disposable - they are merely cheap fodder for the state's economy. Is this an unlikely scenario? I think not given the way our educational inequality is going and given the growing privatisation of schools and health provision. Indeed I might argue we are well along the route. One need only look to (say) the USA to know that this is fast becoming the norm in that country - and what America does today we do tomorrow. But I wonder, would those politicians, parents and electors who so keenly support the grammar schools which bestow such a huge educational and career advantage be quite so keen to support the scenario I have painted.I suspect not and yet, I believe the two cases are directly parallel - to support one and not the other is a nonsense.

And my last thought?– one I have quoted in blogs before but which distils the whole argument about selection in schools marvellously and at the same time points the finger at exactly what is the real driving force for this desire for the return of grammar schools:pure and simple being seen to be better than the next man. Peter Dixon’s wonderful poem “Oh Bring Back Higher Standards”   

Oh bring back higher standards-
the pencil and the cane-
if we want education then we must have some pain.
Oh, bring us back the gone days
Yes, bring back all the past...
let's put them all in rows again - so we can see who's last.
Let's label all the good ones
(the ones like you and me)
and make them into prefects - like prefects used to be.
We;ll put them on the honours board
...as honours ought to be,
and write their names in burnished script-
for all the world to see.
We'll have them back in uniform,
we'll have them doff their caps,
and learn what manners really are
...for decent kind of chaps!
So let's label all the good ones,
we'll call them A's and B's-
and we'll parcel up the useless ones
and call them C's and D's.
We'll even have an E lot!
And F and G maybe!
So they can know they're useless,
and not as good as me.
For we've got to have the stupid-
And we've got to have the poor
Because
If we don't have them...
Well, what are prefects for?

What have we become? Margaret Thatcher was right when she famously said “There is no such thing as society”  Private Fraser in the TV sit-com series  “Dad's Army” put it more eloquently and had it right when he oft repeated: "Doomed, we are all doomed". Private Fraser's oft used comment would be humorous were it not such a serious issue. Our modern  society and electorate Churchill (as I noted earlier) reminded us over half a century ago votes selfishly for me and mine not rather than wisely with mind and morals and in doing so it is walking wide eyed into oblivion – and no-one cares. I am very ashamed of myself and my society today.