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It’s very untypical, and I agree with you. Unfortunately people love an underdog, so the only time that Grammar schools (the upper level) appeared in the public conversation it was someone in the category boasting about how they’d (been) failed by the exam system but became famous anyway.
It’s just something that’s always bugged me about conversations like this, or criminality, or drug use. It’s like people want to spend billions of dollars on something that rarely works and only for the extreme outliers in hopes of saving a single unicorn. But in anything the government does, you’re doing an essential triage — you know going in that you cannot and will not save everyone that it’s possible to save, because you don’t have infinite resources or infinite time or perfect tools. The best that can be done by a policy is to try to do good for the vast majority of people who the policy affects.
In the case of education, I think tracking is the best option because it works for most people. Most people in lower education tiers are not going to somehow become successful writers, actors, and entrepreneurs. The vast majority will be doing low level work somewhere in the system. In that case, it’s much better to teach them skilled trades so they can be productive members of society, earn a reasonable wage, and raise a family than it is to flog them and drag them to university where not only are they going to fail, but when they do, they have little skill to fall back on. If he can at least make something, read a blueprint, cook a great meal, or repair things, he’ll be a productive member of society able to provide for himself and a family, everyone is better off. If he spends that time pretending to understand calculus he works for peanuts in retail, restaurant, warehouse industries for less than a living wage and we pay for his survival for life. Which is better for him? Which is better for the rest of us?
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