ABSTRACT

A political and educational controversy over compositional manipulations has been raging for decades. Concomitant with the democratization of education its fervor is continuously increasing. As part of the democratization of education, accelerated after World War II and more so since the early 1960s, the meaning of the right to education and the concept of equality of educational opportunity have changed radically. The demand for equal public inputs to various learning trajectories was first replaced by a cry for equality of access to various tracks and then by a demand for equal educational results, at first with but eventually without relation to personal aptitude. In return, partisans of heterogeneity attack educational separation as discriminatory and as disregarding the diversity of human intellect, its dynamic nature, and the role of non-cognitive factors in learning. The chapter also presents an overview of key concepts discussed in this book.