Are you saying we have something like that now? Because I really don't see it. There may be more in intelligent folk at the top but this is just pure coincidence, not the intention of the setup we have (which is to maintain privilege, whether the offspring of the privledged are intelligent or not). Some say the cream can't help but rise to the top but it looks like s**t floats to me!dvbuk55 wrote:Harry_Perkins wrote:Aye, this is one of those tiresome slogans that we are expected to parrot without really considering the wider implications. I think really we've got 3 choices with the most boring menial jobs 1) we share it out amongst everyone 2) give the highest pay to these jobs to encourage people to do them (the opposite of now) 3) we force people to do them on pain of destitution. Naturally, 3 is the choice of our society, just so a small lazy proportion of the population don't have to do any work for a living! (and I don't mean the vast majority of the unemployed who want to work).pickaname wrote:Not everyone can be successful.
Youre told the opposite of this all your life - work hard and you'll do well.Well that opens a new discussion really Harry - should the most intelligent be paid the most money, when it is really the drones who produce all the wealth.
I think that is at least part of the reason that grammar schools were done away it and then, after that, private schools encouraged as a fully fledged alternative to the state system. It was becoming too much of a threat to the established order to have bright working class children more regularly bettering their middle class counterparts and ending up in grammar schools. Meanwhile, you had more and more middle class kids failing the 11 plus and ending up in secondary moderns. Naturally, this situation in the long term might have challenged the whole notion of class society. If working class kids are just as naturally bright and intelligent as anyone else, why should they start from such a difficult position and not have the same resources available to them? Think of the talent that is potentially being wasted! So Comprehensives were brought in as a short term 'level playing field' but in the long term cash talks and the rich have followed the money and subsidies to the best schools.
Then Kenneth Baker under Thatcher encouraged private schools when Comprehensives started failing middle class kids too. Now we have the most open 'money buys the best education system' you can imagine. You either pay private school fees directly or you move into the right catchment area to get them into a good state school (or become Catholic overnight) and pay the fees through your mortgage instead. So we really have the exact opposite of meritocracy. This situation, like a lot of things, is a huge fetter on progress.
