Those suggesting that Prince George should be sent to a state grammar school are assuming that he would get into one, effectively conceding that the offspring of the right families had always been guaranteed a place. Perhaps he would have passed the 11 plus, but how do you know?
And those wondering why the Royal Family was sending the future King to Eton when the old aristocracy had long since been priced out of it in favour of the global superclass, you have answered your own question. Indeed, although Prince George does also come off the old aristocracy through the Queen Mother and through the sometime Princess Diana, the Royal Family itself is the last great bastion of a European superclass that barely noticed national borders.
“ effectively conceding that the offspring of the right families had always been guaranteed a place.”
ReplyDeleteNobody’s ever denied it-rich families with educated parents who can also afford private tutors and the like have obviously always had an advantage over some kid from a poor single-mother home.
The point is if we’d built grammar schools everywhere, including poor areas, the middle classes and rich needn’t get in at the expense of the talented poor. Instead Labour had the genius idea of closing them everywhere except middle class towns like Salisbury and areas in the London commuter belt which are besieged by the middle class.
The full range of incomes is found in, for example, every parliamentary constituency. The grammar schools were highly selective socioeconomically. In any case, they could never be brought back on any scale now. You could not just magic up, say, thousands of Classics teachers.
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