ABSTRACT
In 1958 Michael Young published his tragi-comic pseudo-historical account of The Rise of the Meritocracy - 1870-2033: an essay on education and equality; he wisely cast it in the form of a novel, not only because this made the book more readable, but also because it enabled him to sidestep awkward questions which psychologists and educationalists might have asked about his many obiter dicta. Jean Floud stated one desideratum of educational policy when she pleaded for a policy to secure the adult citizen's right to have been educated to the limit of his natural capacities. This, of course, is a Utopian ideal, but one to which educational policy should always aim to approximate. Taking these individual and social needs together, people must contrast them with a society's ability to invest sufficient money and time in education - primary, secondary and tertiary, to use these ugly and antiquated terms.
