All an elite should be, as it is in France, is the group at the top of their field who are best at what they do. The saddest thing about British culture at the moment is the horror of 'elitism'. In education this effectively translates into a horror of excellence.
At the college where I worked in Cardiff, I was obliged to coach my two Oxbridge entrants on the quiet, for fear of making the other students feel 'less valued'.
When I headed an Eng Dept in a College in the East End the exorbitantly expensive consultants (brought in to pre-inspect the college before the real Ofsted inspection) trounced my approach and my lessons as marked by 'draconian discipline and public discussion/of marks and grades which has allowed a competitive, elitist ethos to develop.' Damn right - which is why grade averages in English went up 30% while I was there.
You say Even if you have the talent, and are prepared to put in the work, if your face doesn't fit, or if you don't know the right people, you don't get to join..
I'm proof that this isn't the case. No one's face could fit less than mine - mixed race, female, single parent family on benefits, council estate, criminal siblings - but got into grammar school (and had the option of an scholarship place at a top public school which I didn't take up) simply on the basis of academic merit. Blairites bleat on about widen access/participation in education and yet they and their predecessors destroyed the very system that made this possible.
The biggest difference between me and the teenagers I teach is that I grew up in a home full of books, and half of them have no books in their home at all (the kids brought up by the demented rules of orthodox Sharia law aren't allowed to have any book in the home but the Khoran - we have to provide them with lockers to keep their college books in).
The tragedy is that rather than developing an egalitarian system by encouraging excellence by rewarding hard work and genuine achievement we are now working in a system where all must have prizes, all must feel valued, and standards are 'raised' by widening the goal posts. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the change in the way the A level system has been wrecked and the marking standards lowered since Curriculum 2000 was introduced.
A bit of a rant
At the college where I worked in Cardiff, I was obliged to coach my two Oxbridge entrants on the quiet, for fear of making the other students feel 'less valued'.
When I headed an Eng Dept in a College in the East End the exorbitantly expensive consultants (brought in to pre-inspect the college before the real Ofsted inspection) trounced my approach and my lessons as marked by 'draconian discipline and public discussion/of marks and grades which has allowed a competitive, elitist ethos to develop.' Damn right - which is why grade averages in English went up 30% while I was there.
You say Even if you have the talent, and are prepared to put in the work, if your face doesn't fit, or if you don't know the right people, you don't get to join..
I'm proof that this isn't the case. No one's face could fit less than mine - mixed race, female, single parent family on benefits, council estate, criminal siblings - but got into grammar school (and had the option of an scholarship place at a top public school which I didn't take up) simply on the basis of academic merit. Blairites bleat on about widen access/participation in education and yet they and their predecessors destroyed the very system that made this possible.
The biggest difference between me and the teenagers I teach is that I grew up in a home full of books, and half of them have no books in their home at all (the kids brought up by the demented rules of orthodox Sharia law aren't allowed to have any book in the home but the Khoran - we have to provide them with lockers to keep their college books in).
The tragedy is that rather than developing an egalitarian system by encouraging excellence by rewarding hard work and genuine achievement we are now working in a system where all must have prizes, all must feel valued, and standards are 'raised' by widening the goal posts. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the change in the way the A level system has been wrecked and the marking standards lowered since Curriculum 2000 was introduced.