"""When ‘no child left behind’ becomes a pathology, it becomes deeply suspicious of difference, because it believes that if two things are different, one of them must be worse."""
More than that, it's a psychological defence mechanism that insists no-one must ever be judged as better or more competent than anyone else. People with pathologically low self-esteem worry if such judgement does happen, they will be judged and found wanting.
Many of the problems we face now are the result of well-meant changes to the education system. I passed the 11+ and went to a Grammar School; my sister went to a Comprehensive School. Eliminating the 11+ and with it Grammar Schools across most of the country was a good decision, because not everyone develops at the same rate and there is almost a year between the youngest and the oldest in the same class (which in the last year of Junior school is near enough a 10% age difference). So having a single secondary school to which all pupils in an area go is sensible, providing that there is setting and the ability to move children between sets. Sometimes judges screw up good systems; the Greenwich judgement is an example that made the life of Council Education Departments much harder.
Moving the control of schools from local councils to direct funding by Government seemed like a good idea at the time because some local education authorities were dire. The value of the LEA that was lost (and only partially recovered by multi-academy trusts) was the economy of scale that allowed them to employ music teachers across the Borough where a single school might only be able to justify a fraction of a FTE music teacher and also to fund the purchase of musical instruments that could be loaned to children. Based on a single authority covering a London Borough, it is quite practical to find enough talented children to populate a whole symphony orchestra, while a single school might struggle with much more than a string quartet. It is not just developing the skills; playing in an orchestra requires teamwork in well beyond any sport.
But the biggest failing of our education system comes after age 16. Both schools for 16-18 and universities for 18-21 teach a narrow curriculum to individual students. At university there are Sciences, Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities departments as silos with no overlap between them. In the USA, and also in France, the curriculum even at university is broader with scientists having to take an Arts and Humanities subject as part of their degree and vice versa. In the USA this is known colloquially as 'Physics for Poets'. In the UK, as far as I know Keele University with their Foundation Year is the only university that does this.
There are both positive and negative things in the Gove, Gibb, et al. legacy. The biggest negative is related to the balance you're discussing between no child held back and no child left behind. The current national curriculum contains too much content in many places, because it was written by people who didn't fully understand the experience of struggling children in school. It works okay for the children who are comfortably at Greater Depth (GDS) and then 7-9 at GCSE but everyone else gets dragged through too quickly and ends up largely lost. The current situation needs reversing so that most children can master the national curriculum content, and schools then extend those who would be held back a little, or a lot, if they didn't go further (with schools appropriately incentivised to do this).
The expansion of apprenticeship opportunities and a de-stigmatisation of classical trades would go a long way towards improving the educational experience for all children and young people.
"""When ‘no child left behind’ becomes a pathology, it becomes deeply suspicious of difference, because it believes that if two things are different, one of them must be worse."""
More than that, it's a psychological defence mechanism that insists no-one must ever be judged as better or more competent than anyone else. People with pathologically low self-esteem worry if such judgement does happen, they will be judged and found wanting.
Scott Alexander wrote a blog post on this: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/matt-yglesias-considered-as-the-nietzschean
To which i responded: https://pontifex.substack.com/p/master-morality-and-slave-morality
Education vouchers. Let anyone set up a school, and the money follow the child.
Many of the problems we face now are the result of well-meant changes to the education system. I passed the 11+ and went to a Grammar School; my sister went to a Comprehensive School. Eliminating the 11+ and with it Grammar Schools across most of the country was a good decision, because not everyone develops at the same rate and there is almost a year between the youngest and the oldest in the same class (which in the last year of Junior school is near enough a 10% age difference). So having a single secondary school to which all pupils in an area go is sensible, providing that there is setting and the ability to move children between sets. Sometimes judges screw up good systems; the Greenwich judgement is an example that made the life of Council Education Departments much harder.
Moving the control of schools from local councils to direct funding by Government seemed like a good idea at the time because some local education authorities were dire. The value of the LEA that was lost (and only partially recovered by multi-academy trusts) was the economy of scale that allowed them to employ music teachers across the Borough where a single school might only be able to justify a fraction of a FTE music teacher and also to fund the purchase of musical instruments that could be loaned to children. Based on a single authority covering a London Borough, it is quite practical to find enough talented children to populate a whole symphony orchestra, while a single school might struggle with much more than a string quartet. It is not just developing the skills; playing in an orchestra requires teamwork in well beyond any sport.
But the biggest failing of our education system comes after age 16. Both schools for 16-18 and universities for 18-21 teach a narrow curriculum to individual students. At university there are Sciences, Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities departments as silos with no overlap between them. In the USA, and also in France, the curriculum even at university is broader with scientists having to take an Arts and Humanities subject as part of their degree and vice versa. In the USA this is known colloquially as 'Physics for Poets'. In the UK, as far as I know Keele University with their Foundation Year is the only university that does this.
There are both positive and negative things in the Gove, Gibb, et al. legacy. The biggest negative is related to the balance you're discussing between no child held back and no child left behind. The current national curriculum contains too much content in many places, because it was written by people who didn't fully understand the experience of struggling children in school. It works okay for the children who are comfortably at Greater Depth (GDS) and then 7-9 at GCSE but everyone else gets dragged through too quickly and ends up largely lost. The current situation needs reversing so that most children can master the national curriculum content, and schools then extend those who would be held back a little, or a lot, if they didn't go further (with schools appropriately incentivised to do this).
The expansion of apprenticeship opportunities and a de-stigmatisation of classical trades would go a long way towards improving the educational experience for all children and young people.