Selective thinking leads to mediocrity

Elites of one kind or another have always dominated society. It's an unavoidable fact of life. Over the centuries, various societies have devised different structures and strictures to limit the power and influence of their elites; whether by legislation, direct action or revolution. Inevitably, however, in displacing one elite group they have merely tilled the ground ready for another to come along and plant itself.
Between the two world wars, over a third of the UK workforce was employed in service; a huge army of worker ants busting their collective gut to ensure that their betters - as they preferred to think of themselves - could enjoy privileges totally disproportionate to their value to society. . Even countries which had turfed out the traditional "toffs"- Russia, China, France ,Germany - rapidly filled the vacuum with their own newly minted versions; party officials, intellectuals and others who were eager to endorse and legitimise the claims of the new rulers. Despite the popular American notion that they enjoy a "classless" society, the same was just as true in the US; and still is today.
Several things changed the status quo, at least in Great Britain. The first was the steady, if not unchallenged, rise of the Trades Union movement between the wars and after WW11. The second was the war itself. The imperatives of war forced the government of the day to turn to women to do jobs that had been the sole preserve of men. Female tractor drivers, pilots, ambulance crew, factory workers and miners filled the gaps left by men dispatched to the front line.
After the war, those men returned to a country and society they hardly recognised; bankrupt, battered and with few prospects for immediate economic recovery. Their jobs had either disappeared or, in some cases, been successfully taken by women. Their homes, if they were still standing, were in a state of disrepair and neglect. Yet, the elite - the monied classes in both town and country - expected normal Service - or more accurately servitude - to be resumed immediately.
Given this scenario, it was surprising only to the elite that the masses responded at the earliest possible opportunity by electing a Labour Government. As Hartley Shawcross is consistently misquoted as saying: "We are the masters now". Of course, the fact that Shawcross was a Baron by inheritance meant that he had always been a master, but you get the point. It was the people who now held the reins of power.
Irrespective of anything else they did, that Labour Government's legacy included two very significant achievements; the provision of universal health care through the National Health Service and through their implementartion of the Tories' Education Act 1944, a secondary education free for all pupils. At the tip of this tripartite system was the selective Grammar School, which opened up the prospect of attainment and advancement to children from even the poorest homes.
A whole generation of children was able to escape the inner-city through a grammar education. Their horizons were expanded dramatically simply through exposure to a higher form of learning. By the Sixties, it was no longer unusual for the brightest and best to make it to Oxford of Cambridge.
Of course, beneath this pinnacle of achievement was the rest of the pyramid; those who, for one reason or another, had missed out on selection. Inevitably, and ironically, Labour's own legislation had created a new elite. Rather than money or heritage this one was founded on education. It wasn't long before the Levellers -epitomised by Anthony Crosland- were plotting to destroy the grammar system because of its "unfairness". Ironically the man who said ""If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to destroy every fucking grammar school in England. And Wales and Northern Ireland" was himself the product of a selective education; at Highgate School and Oxford University.
In that sense, he is not merely the original template for Nu-Labour ministers and apparatchiks but could almost be regarded as their spiritual father.
Virtually every member of the current Labour administration is a product of selective education. Many of them - Harriet Harman, Tony Blair, Ed Balls, the brothers Milliband - were formed in precisely the same kind of mould as Crosland - fee-paying private schools followed by Oxbridge. Under them, the standard of education in Great Britain has been so comprehensively devalued that mediocrity is now the benchmark. Statistically, we have more pupils passing more exams than at any point in our history. Almost 50% of the school-going population gets a shot at a university education. Every year, the propaganda machine gets cranked up. The papers are full of pictures of teenagers ecstatic at discovering they have scored five As at A level. Harman, Balls, the Millibands and even Brown himself will do the rounds of the TV and Radio studios to characterise anyone who questions the exponential rise in examination grades as a reactionary blimp who doesn't appreciate the sheer effort and sacrifice "our kids" have had to make to achieve this amazing level of success.
Conversely, the international league tables for Maths, English, Physics, Geography show that we are slipping, relentlessly, down the educational ladder to share rungs with the likes of Botswana and Estonia. Many of our leading universities are having to provide British pupils with the basic Maths and language skills they need before they can even start their course proper. So a three year degree turns into four years. For poorer pupils, or those that are not so motivated, that extra year of tuition fees might translate into loans and other financial sacrifices they are not able or willing to make.
In case you think that I am reporting this second hand; think again. I work for an international engineering company that has a fresh intake of science and engineering graduates every year. We have not been approached by any British-born graduates of sufficient quality for the last two years.
So, are we take it that the real world we have to deal with every day is wrong? That 22 year old graduates cannot write a proper sentence or do basic arithmetic not through lack of intelligence but shoddy education? Or do we believe the government when it says these young people have enjoyed the benefits of a hugely successful education system? And, therefore, if they can't do basic arithmetic they must, by definition, be terminally thick?
Because the only alternative is to assume that our Government is deliberately and consistently lying to us. And that it is being aided and abetted in those lies by the bulk of the public educational establishment.
If so, what is its purpose?
Well, we are back to the elite again, are we not. The Balls, Harmans, Straws, Millibands have arrived where they are by virtue being better prepared, better briefed and better connected. In other words, they have all enjoyed the fruits of a selective education. Irrespective of the school they went to or its location, their educational environment would have been challenging, invigorating, disciplined, competitive and achievement oriented.
These are the very attributes that they are, systematically, trying to excise from the modern school experience. Children - sorry KIDS - must not be stretched, challenged or forced to compete. Above all,they must not be subject to discipline.
After all, what is the point of becoming an elite if you provide the same opportunities for another fifty million or so people to join you at the top of the greasy pole. Far better for everyone if you dumb the system down, even while denying that you are doing so. Make mediocrity the new gold standard and then only a very few will ever escape the great mass of the ill-educated to challenge your position at the top.