Grammar for me.
The whole selection thing - aged 10 when I started doing the tests - was frankly weird. Knowing that just maybe 1 or 2 of my year would be chosen - would I be one of them ? Would my mates?
The grammar I went to was bloody fab though. It was hard work but there was loads going on at the school, and if you didn't really fit in academically, they really encouraged you with other stuff (sports, drama, music). The place always had things going on after the official school day ended, and mostly the pupils were doing things because they wanted to.
The music side of things had a contemporary edge. You could choose drumming say, or electric guitar (way too expensive for my parents - I had to do acoustic
), percussion... aswell as the more formal things.
The school used to kick arse as well. Our games teacher (predictably sadistic
) played for the wasps, and Rugby teams almost always won the area leagues. So we had a reputation that meant we weren't considered easy pickings for the other schools, or the local kids (the school was in the middle of a massive council estate, oddly).
It was great really, even though I was never very academic.
THEN
Parents moved.
Went to a grammar near Brum. Head teacher thought he was god, because he had the last grammer in the midlands. They wouldn't let me do all the O Levels I was previously doing. Told me to forget about the extra curricular stuff I used to do (drama, stage managing). Quite a few of the teachers were rubbish. And they had a stupid "house" system where you wore colour coded ties that gave you some arbitrary allegiance. WTF? And kids who were streamed into doing more O Levels were termed "Specials" and had their own form classes, to keep them seperate. Oh my.
I had the last laugh. In my interview (for that 2nd grammar) the head teacher told my mum that I should forget about computers "It's very competetive".
At the time I was already selling software, so he was making himself look like a total arse. After a year or so, when they found out that I was quite successful (I'd had a book published by this stage) the teacher who ran the computer club, which I'd avoided 'cos they were all a bit nerdy, came asking if I could do a talk - on how to get started in the computer business. I totally forgot, so he came to remind me... where we always used to hide to smoke.
The worst thing, I think, about old school grammars was single sex education. You'd get more done, maybe, academically, but I think it wasn't so good for basic social skills.
I'd still favour tiered (state) education today, but (in my idealist world) the schools would all be small. So no monster comp - like an education factory - sat alongside a small "upper tier" school... just lots of very individualistic schools. And no religious ones. But that's another discussion.
