There is, it is true, an educational ladder broad enough to enable statesmen (themselves the products of Eton) to proclaim with pride—and. indeed, with truth—that a clever boy from the poorest family can find his way to the proudest of the ardent Universities. But the ladder by-passes the establishments where the indefinable stamp of correctness is applied. There are no scholarships (or so few as to be negligible), that take the poor boy to the Public Schools. and when he arrives at the University it is too late for him, save in the most exceptional eases. to cross the dividing me, The results of this system are, from the point of view of public policy and of the efficiency of the State, most unfortunate. It is not that there is much deliberate exclusion of the underprivileged but fully educated boy from the posts that lead to the top, though there is unquestionably a great deal of unconscious bias through inevitable tendency of the dispensers of to reproduce their own kind.
But any poor boy who has climbed up the educational ladder has been made very aware by the time he reaches the top that, though he may be able to write examination pavers as well as anyone, there are many other equally important thines—accent turns of speech, ha of dress—in which he has not been educated. The result, in some, is to generate shyness and lack of self-confidence in others to breed the aggressiveness of the inferior complex: in both to give a twist to the character that is a real handicap throughout life. The Public Schools turn out verhavs 10.000 boys a year: from this tiny fraction. about 2 rer cant.. of each year's graduates to life we select the great majority of those who are to be given any easy Toad to the top. The selection is clearly not one of merit, It has become a matter of grave urgency to break down the barrier that divides the British people into two nations. Hitherto. the very great educational progress of the past 70 years has been directed towards providing intellectual opportunities for the children of the poor. But admirable though the growth of the state-supported secondary school system is, it has not prevented a hardening of the social cleavage and further progress along the same lines will have the same failure.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.