The selective function
The selective function is one of Alexander Inglis six basic functions of school. It refers not to human choice but a eugenics process as applied to what he called “the favored races.” In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit—with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments—clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That’s what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.
Perhaps this has to do with how
- [[Parents seek autism diagnoses for their children to acquire eligibility for school and therapeutic programs]
- Psychiatry plays a moralizing role for society by defining behavior in terms of normal and abnormal
References
- Gatto, T., John. (1992). Dumbing Us Down The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling Chapter 6. Against School (p. 112). Gabriola Island, Canada: New Society Publishers.