ABSTRACT
'Emancipation' is a useful metaphor, for education is to be contrasted with the kind of enslavement associated with ignorance and with the lack of those mental powers, without which one is so easily duped and deceived. The pursuit of equality in the opportunity to engage in that dialogue has been the hallmark of comprehensive education over the last forty or so years. The more positive meaning of equality was referred to by Daunt , at the onset of comprehensive education, in his book Comprehensive Values, namely, 'equality of respect'. It is argued that the pursuit of equality in schools has caused a decline in standards in the work of the more able pupils — especially in mathematics and the sciences, but also in literacy and the modern languages. The comprehensive ideal has too often been associated with schools identified as comprehensive because they are not selective — either in ability or in social class.
