I am a product of exactly such a system, which obtained in England and Wales
from the 1944 Education Act till the sixties, when it was replaced by
"comprehensive" schooling. Everybody got to take the "11-plus" which was
used to sort you into the right bin in the tri-partite system. The
rationale for doing this sorting at 11 was based on specious research by
(Sir) Cyril Burt, who falsified his results of twin studies to "prove" that
by 11 you could measure non-environmentally-modified "intelligence" and
select education "appropriate" to the child's academic or technical or
practical disposition.
"Good" elementary schools were ones that prepared you well for the 11+. I
failed the 11+, and went to a "secondary modern school". I passed the "12+"
and transferred to a grammar school. I didn't like it much, and ended up at
a secondary technical school, which just happened to be a specialist school
for the arts, on a corner of the art college campus. I was "lucky". Many
school districts didn't even bother implementing the third, "technical",
category.
Even within these schools, though, we still had "streams" - I ended up in
the more-academic stream in the secondary modern school, the
"more-technical" stream in the grammar school, and the "more-academic"
stream of the secondary tecnhical/art school. When this system was done away
with, "streaming" or "tracking" still happened in many so-called
"comprehensive" schools.
Access to higher education in the UK was free but by no means universal.
The primary function of all of the winnowing of chaff was to identify the
elite* (7% or so) who would go to University, via the top streams in the
grammar schools or (later) the comprehensives. A by-product was a
disempowered labor force, "factory fodder" nicely prepared by their
secondary-modern/lower-stream comprehensive experiences, for the production
line.
Tony Scott
*The REAL elite took no part whatsoever in this system: they moved from
(private) preparatory schools to (private) public schools to (specific)
colleges at Oxford or Cambridge, to chambers (lawyers), regiment (sodliers)
or board room.
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