The Politics of Dancing

Tapton Secondary Modern school Writing a highly impressionistic portrait of my overwrought childhood and early adolescence came about as the result of an argument I had toward the end of last year about grammar schools. Grammar schools have always held an attraction for a particular brand of right wing meritocrat, [1] and others nostalgic for the days when a few working class kids could rise up the social ladder by passing their 11+ and going on to excel. Meritocrats are apt to adopt charming analogies to describe this form of social Darwinism, such as separating the wheat from the chaff, or recently by the Mayor of London, who used the eloquent analogy of a box of cornflakes. This might be fine for the wheat, or superior cornflake, though I’m not so sure how much fun, but a pretty dismal affair for the chaff. Whilst not advocating a puerile all must have prizes culture,- though a system that constantly reinforces the idea of winners and losers is surely just as pueril...