"The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be "undemocratic". Entrance examinations must be framed so that all, or nearly all, citizens can go to universities, whether they have any power (or wish) to profit by higher education or not. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval's attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT. And what we must realise is that "democracy" in the diabolical sense (I'm as good as you...) is the finest instrument we could possibly have for extirpating political democracies from the face of the earth."
C.S. Lewis - (1898-1963)
British novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist.
Source: The Screwtape Letters, 1942
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