'based on ability'. Or rather, academic test scores, which will be perfectly correlated with parents financial status, status and employment. There's no doubt

'based on ability'. Or rather, academic test scores, which will be perfectly correlated with parents financial status, status and employment. There's no doubt that a highly conscientious and thoughtful trades-person could raise children to compete with the bankers kids, but it's just so much harder. So you end up with an institutionalized classism. That said, the same thing ends up happening in the US/UK, probably by more systematic than institutionalized mechanism. The dark truth is that in some ways if functions better, because broadly speaking highly conscientious parents raise highly conscientious kids, but it also makes things more stringent and unfair. (Germany:) " Children from rural areas, pupils from lower socio-economic backgrounds and boys in general have a significantly lower probability of being selected to the most academic school track even when their ability is similar to that of their urban and better socially placed counterparts." [1] The other thing is that Anglo culture is just more open. PISA testing shows that when accounting for economic factors, immigrants to US/UK/Can etc. perform just as well as local kids. (i.e. immigrants are poorer, but they do just as well as those with same economic background) On the Continent, immigrants fare considerably poorer, especially in Germany and ironically the worst in Finland which otherwise has one of the top education systems in the world. [2] (See page 28) A lot of this might be a function of language: English is something many migrants might already speak whereas German and Finnish are that much harder to pick up. That said from the rest of the PISA paper it doesn't seem that Continental Schools stick out that much otherwise and Germany did successfully make some 'big reforms' in 2000 that seemed to move the needle overall, though this could also be a function of unification leap forward. As far as copyright in 19th century - I wonder if the UK's lack of progress in publishing was also a function of super classiest social hierarchy where they didn't see a point in that much education for the plebes? As for 'modern lessons' I think this analysis applies mostly to 'knowledge' more so than much else. I don't think progress is hampered because 'Thor' is copyright and by and large, information is mostly accessible. I think this analogue might apply to the current issue of copyright of Scientific papers, but not much else. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242221851_Inequalities_in_Secondary_School_Attendance_in_Germany https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242221851_Inequalit... [2] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwji_L3mjIvzAhVkZN8KHZdwBd4QFnoECAoQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.oecd.org%2Fpisa%2FPISA%25202018%2520Insights%2520and%2520Interpretations%2520FINAL%2520PDF.pdf&usg=AOvVaw3jwM_L4Fv397SVrDbStdmW https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...