The Ones Who Walk Away from MGS

[steepholm]

One of my pet peeves is the phrase "grammar school system", applied to the arrangements for state schools brought in by the 1944 Education Act. This evening, for example, there's been a programme on grammar schools, which the BBC web site describes as being about "the British grammar school system, whose aim was to give the best education to talented children". It talked a lot about the 11 plus, from the point of view of those who passed and failed it. David Attenborough, Joan Bakewell, and others, were on hand to laud the schools that opened the way to their being sirred and damed.

The trouble is that there never was a "grammar school system". Talking about it in that way is like referring to universities as "the first class degree system", and ignoring the existence of people who don't get firsts, who are (even in these days of grade inflation) the vast majority. What the '44 act actually brought in, of course, or attempted to, was a tripartite system, of which grammar schools were only one part, the other two being secondary technical schools (of which relatively few were ever built) and secondary moderns. While grammar schools got most of the money, about 70% of children were branded failures at the age of eleven and sent to secondary moderns. It's quite certain that these included many mute inglorious Attenboroughs, and Bakewells born to blush unseen. I celebrate David and Joan, but I also mourn their thwarted cousins.

Earlier this week, in a quintessentially Radio 4 series that takes famous people back to the sites of their childhood paper rounds, we had Alan Parker looking at the bleak north London flatscape of his youth, and commenting: "I didn't have much ambition. The huge difference for me was that I got to the grammar school, Dame Alice Owens, at the Angel. And I was the only kid in the flats who got to that grammar school, and that was the absolute salvation for me: that was the reason that I ended up doing what I do now." This is obviously good news for Alan Parker, and since the programme focused on him it comes across as a fine endorsement of the "grammar school system". But do we really believe that of all the children in those flats, only Parker was intelligent and potentially-academic enough to have benefited from the kind of education he got at Dame Alice Owens? Thought not. And if grammar school was his "salvation", what does that make the Sec. Mod.?

Personally I still root for the comprehensive system (with setting not streaming, thank you), but whatever one's opinion, as a point of terminology it seems only fair to call the tripartite system by its proper name; or else, given that over two thirds of children were sent along that route, to call it "the secondary modern system". Otherwise, it just gets a bit too much like Omelas - but with most of the city's children in the cellar.

Comments

[calimac.livejournal.com]

As a foreigner with only a spotty knowledge of the UK educational system, I am struggling to understand some of this, and I'm quite prepared for pitying comments telling me I ought to go look at some album cover of four guys walking across a road.

What is "the comprehensive system" that you say you root for? Is it the same thing as the system with the title "the grammar school system" which you say is inaccurate and would better be called "the secondary modern system"? Or is it something different?

If it's the same thing, why are you rooting for it, if it condemns 70% of the children to the cellar in Omelas? Perhaps that is explained by your desire for "setting not streaming," but while I think I know what "streaming" is, what is "setting"? And isn't the Omelas comparison a bit extreme? Are the secondary moderns really that bad? Have none of their ex-students ever achieved Attenborough/Bakewell/Parker levels of success despite their disadvantages, ever? (Mind, I'm not arguing that, if they did, it proves that the secondary moderns are as good as the grammar schools. I'm from a country which has people pointing to our president as proof that blacks are no longer discriminated against, so I know how fatuous that sort of argument is. I'm just looking for some calibration of the degree of disadvantage here.)

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

Wait - is that what Elvis Costello is singing about? That basement?

I know someone (actually the guy whose Dad used to glimpse Thomas Hardy on his walks) streamed into a tech school at eleven, and eventually to a Polytechnic school. He worked like a dog to get into a doctoral program and eventually taught third world economics at the Open U. He now teaches in the US. But even with his degree and several books his background both oppressed and stigmatized him. (Alan Krueger once expressed contempt for him - what a way to be known to the leading figures in your field: like the first Blackadder series). He felt like a poor person among the self-possesse rich, but much worse since the sense of inferiority and stigma were internalized much more deeply. He felt, over and over, that he didn't have the background he needed to think about the things he wanted to think about. It made him defensive and bitter - he did important work but he was incalculably damaged by decisions made when he was eleven years old.

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

Australia mostly has a comprehensive system. Much harder for the very bright sparks, but way better in general.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Despite the name, MGS was a direct grant school up to 1976, when it became independent.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Don't get me started on grammar schools! Kent still has them and I made the grave mistake back in the day of passing the 11+ and fetching up experiencing living hell in one, which I cut and ran from, unqualified, at 15.

It wasn't wise to be working class in a grammar and even less wise to be trans...........:o(

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I could rant all day about the injustices of the 11+ system (which is what I always call it, not the "grammar school system"). And that's despite the fact that I passed the 11+ and in theory should have benefited from a "grammar school education". Unfortunately, it didn't suit me at all because it was assumed that a) if you were bright, you were academic and b) that the academic is superior to the practical. Also the British system suited the clever specialist, not the clever generalist, and still does to a large extent.

It was just possible to make it to university if you failed your 11+. I met a couple of lads at the technical college where I ended up retaking my A-levels who had both gone to secondary moders schools due to failing the English part of the 11+. Both were excellent at maths and probably these days would have been diagnosed with dyslexia and given extra help at an early age. However, if it hadn't been for their parents backing them to the hilt and getting them to leave school at 16 and transfer to the local tech where they were sailing through physics, maths and further maths (and desperately struggling to pass the O-level English needed to get them to university), I don't know what they would have done. Ended up very frustrated, most probably. But as you say, a comprehensive school with setting would have provided for their educational needs much better, as well as allowing me to keep doing the practical subjects I enjoyed instead of just fast-tracking me through the academic ones.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

For some reason &*&%^! LJ isn't letting me respond directly to to your post, so I hope this posts as a new thread!

My brother went to the local tec and is now a senior social worker.

Fwiw I would say that I am both bright and academic as the six lots of letters from four unis after my name these days would testify, but grammar, especially with the personal issues I was dealing with at the time (including being abused by one of the teachers in said august institution) just wasn't the way to go- Working for four years then being accepted as an undergrad on merit was...................

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I am with you on comprehensives. My first political action, at 10, was to refuse to take the 11+ -- we lived in Notts at the time, which was comprehensive, but the Grammar School survived as an Independent and my junior school was all for it. They were rather appalled at me, but I stuck to my guns.
My head of dept in my last university had been taught by my father, when the latter was working in a 2ndary Modern. 40 years on, there was P with a PhD, a chair, and a stellar reputation. So much for the judgement passed on him by the examiners when he was 11. But, as you say, there were so very many more who lost hope at 11 or never had another chance.
It was iniquitous. No wonder the Tories loved it.