Letter: Opportunities for all at grammar schools
Bringing back grammar schools is a very good idea, to give bright, clever working class children a chance of moving up in life. The mantra from the left wing is that grammar schools have better teachers than comprehensive schools are false.
Grammar school teachers are not better than teachers in comprehensive schools. The children are better. Much of a child's quality is genetic and much of the rest is based on factors that one cannot reasonably expect a school to control.
Non school factors such as parents having the habit of learning which is passed on to their children, children that self learn through having a natural broad cognitive ability, and the local environment.
A clever child at a non grammar state school may face the problems that lessons are designed for average intelligent children. Thus clever working class children find lessons boring, and they may become disruptive in class or play truant. There is also the problem of fitting in with pupils with lower education expectations.
The state can give as much education to a child as it likes. However, if the child doesn't have a great curiosity about the world and consequently a natural propensity to learn, then most of the money will be wasted. It's best for the state to give average intelligent children education enough to do trade or technician jobs (skilled workers) but that's all. You can't make a silk purse out of a pig's ear.
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