Not that it inspired me to dance. Kirsty Young told of how she was thrown out of ballet school at the age of 4, on the grounds that she was hopeless. Much the same thing happened to me
I was so excited by the idea of ballet classes. I got to wear my white organdie party dress & a pair of pink satin ballet slippers. I was OK, in my opinion, at prancing around & pointing my toes. Disaster struck when we were told to lie on our tummies & touch the back of our head with our feet
The teacher came to pull up my legs so I could get the hang of it. To no avail. I think mummy must have been advised not to waste her money, because the classes stopped for me
Children learn early on about things they cannot do
Avenues used to get closed off early for those who were not ‘academic’ enough for grammar school, but fortunately academic tests were not, for me, the equivalent of touching my head with my feet
I have just made a disconcerting discovery about the process of selection for 11+ education, thanks to the book Small-Town Politics: A study of political life in Glossop by AH Birch
Until January 1956 selection in Derbyshire was made by junior school head teachers, who were each given a quota of grammar school places. There were also written exams, & meetings to discuss the results, but only to decide on cases where the exam results did not match the heads assessment
It is possible that that system was not used in the part of Derbyshire where we lived – the county was split into divisions with executive responsibility for education. But I am astonished
As far as I personally was led to believe, all depended on the 11+ exam
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