ABSTRACT
Frequent reference was made in previous chapters to doubts concerning the aim of secondary education for all – at least, if that means the sort of education which leads to significant social mobility and to the kind of learning traditionally associated with being an ‘educated person’. Indeed, as pointed out in Chapter 1, the US National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: the Imperative for Educational Reform, declared, ‘the educational foundations of our society are gradually being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people’ (quoted in Ravitch, 2010: 24). And, in England, Rhodes Boyson did not mince his words in arguing that we should never ‘have moved to comprehensive schools and the lumpenproletariat we have created’.
