ABSTRACT
Modern society requires the ever more responsible participation of people with different but essential points of view or distinct items of information. This chapter argues that 'differentiation' may be a better word to use than 'selection', with all its institutional and emotional background. The 'vestibule' or 'general' departments of many different institutions of supposedly 'further' education in many countries are therefore really undertaking a differentiated phase of later secondary education. Therefore, to give special attention to special children is usually stigmatized as undemocratic – at any rate when it would result in accelerated courses, 'tougher' subjects, and intellectual differentiation as the rest of the world knows it. The selection of children in the category just described must never, it is emphasized, be based upon psychological or other tests as familiar in Western Europe and North America. Thus, though thousands of different careers are prepared for by the most farsighted selection, the growth of 'elitism' and arrogance are guarded against.
