The problem with grammar schools

A certain generation of writers swears by grammar schools, but DJ Taylor isn't convinced of thAs well as offering a conducted tour of the world of "Oxford English" in the past half-century, and reassembling the materials from which a particular literary sensibility was forged, John Carey's autobiography is a defence of the modern education system's least fashionable redoubt: the grammar school. This apologia starts as early as the fourth paragraph, where Carey suggests that the blame for Oxbridge's "utterly disproportionate" public school entry "lies with those who destroyed the grammar schools". Had selective state education survived, Carey argues, it would by now "have all but eliminated the public school contingent at Oxford and Cambridge, with far-reaching effects on our society".e merits of selective education