While research evidence shows the negative impact of ability grouping on children, this book suggests that the reason the practice is still embraced is the unspoken allegiance to the values of empire that governments, schools, and many parents still uphold, promoting competition and hierarchies over and above ethical principles on the education of societys most vulnerable, our children.
The practice, which happens across social class, humiliates children deemed less academically able by rounding them up in front and in opposition to their better intellectual peers. Wielding knowledge as a weapon of humiliation warps childrens relationship to organized forms of knowledge, making them antagonistic or indifferent towards it. This book responds to Michael Youngs The Rise of the Meritocracy, by focusing on the plight of those who are educationally placed in opposition to the intellectual elites: the bottom set citizen, rich or poor and ready to vote.
This book will appeal to anyone concerned with democracy and childrens rights in education, including the rich, on whom I shine the light of deficit for a change. Thus, Donald Trump and Nigel Farage exemplify the bottom set citizen in all his facilitated glory. Other, more vulnerable BSCs are not as lucky.
Bristol University Press
