This article largely comes down to the age-old trade-off that societies need to make: when is the individual more important vs when is the group more important?

This article largely comes down to the age-old trade-off that societies need to make: when is the individual more important vs when is the group more important? It seems clear that people in the upper half of the ability range suffer when the very top of the ability range are creamed off. Does hot-housing the very top make up for the losses in the almost-good-enough? This is a value judgement, and I think it's disingenuous to say one is absolutely a better trade-off than the other. There's a lot of conflation by other people on this topic with the social structure of US middle and high schools, with all the bullying. I think that's an orthogonal topic and specific to US, and distinct from streaming / hot-housing.