The Grammar School system was and is a disgrace!
At the age of eleven children were arbitrarily tested and shunted down pathways to success or failure.
It was all self-prophesising – those marked as failures became just that!
less than 10% were creamed off. The 90+% were dumped. They were ear-marked for a ‘technical’ career – using their hands, even though most of them were not interested in using their hands for anything other than battering people. They saw themselves as thick failures and went through life as a no-hoper, an outcast and full of resentment.
I would not like to encounter a number of the ‘products’ of the Secondary Moderns down a dark alley
We need everyone being equally welcome, everyone being valued. We need social cohesion and self-esteem. The world is not all about intelligence. There is a place for everyone. We all have worth.
I speak from experience as both an eleven-plus failure and a Headteacher. With an IQ of 155 I failed my eleven-plus and was dumped into a terrible place where education was a battle. If it hadn’t been for luck, parents and intrinsic intelligence I would have, like so many other talented individuals, floundered and gone under. The eleven-plus is a terrible thing to impose on young people. It can destroy a fragile psyche. We cannot tolerate over 90% of our children being sacrificed in that way.
Read what a highly successful ex-Secondary Headteacher has to say. I’m the only one making sense!
