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Interesting post. I have a few thoughts (and please don't take any of them as aggressive/trying to start an argument - just thinking out loud!):
Is it really a "false idea that some people are 'more intelligent' than others"? As with sport, are some not just naturally more capable, regardless of training/teaching? I appreciate this all depends on your definition of 'intelligence', but are you really saying that had I gone through exactly the same upbringing/education as Einstein, I'd have his grasp of theoretical physics?
My parents were both teachers and regularly had to deal with classrooms of 35 kids, five or so of which had (differing) learning disabilities and another few with behavioral problems. Your desire for an education system that is "conscious of everyone's different abilities and does not discriminate against anyone" doesn't really factor in the real world. The teacher in my example above is very much "conscious of everyone's different abilities" but it is extremely difficult/at times impossible to engage in any meaningful way with all of the children during a lesson. Are those with an aptitude for the subject not "discriminated against" as the teacher has to spend the majority of the time with the children with learning disabilities or controlling those with behavioral problems? So what is the solution?
You say the education system is being used to separate and classify people (and that I presume you view this as a bad thing), but how would you propose the children in the aforementioned class obtain the education they require? Do they not need to be separated to allow those with particular needs the attention they require and to allow the remainder to get the attention they were otherwise lacking? I hope these are coming across as the genuine questions they are, and not argumentative or aggressive - always hard to tell on the internet!
I'm not sure I have any idea what the answers should be - they are all questions to which I'm sure there is no easy answer. I was packed off to boarding school at a very young age and for each subject we were, on arrival, graded and put into 'sets' of ability. You could move up or down at the end of each term depending on how you performed. Are you against this kind of system where depending on where your abilities lie you can be stretched and challenged at the appropriate level, or is this the segregation that you are against?
The French baccalauréat system is an interesting one that seems to provide a broad base of education that you talk of.
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Ratty
@Oliver Schick
We talked a little about Michael Gove's education reforms a while back ...
https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/230525/
... but he's no longer Education Secretary.
Nicky Morgan seems slightly less mad and stopped some of Gove's stuff ...
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/feb/05/education-secretary-nicky-morgan-pulls-plug-michael-gove-exam-reforms
... but I wouldn't be surprised if there was still a lot of skulduggery going on in the education world. I haven't had time to follow it, though.
Quite generally, education has been used, for a long time, to separate people and to classify them. I think that's not the fault of education as such, but of the false idea that some people are 'more intelligent' than others. I've always been profoundly shocked when someone has told me that at school a teacher told them they were shit and would never amount to anything.
I think all people have a roughly equal mix of strengths and weaknesses, but some people stand out more because both their strengths and weaknesses are more extreme, whereas those who are a little good, but not outstanding, at most things, are considered less intelligent. The extremes are often useful and entertaining, but not in any way more important than very balanced arrangements of strengths and weaknesses.
I extend that model even to people with severe learning disabilities, whose difficulty in learning (which makes it harder for them to benefit from education) enables them to have strengths that those who learn more don't have.
One important thing about strengths and weaknesses is that everyone should be given the opportunity to find out about their own. Self-knowledge is not only knowledge of self but also knowledge by self. Needless to say, this would need to be underpinned by a better system of knowledge than we have at the moment.
The education system that I'd like to see would be conscious of everyone's different abilities and not discriminate against anyone. It should have a broad base initially to enable people to get an idea of what they're good and bad at. There's nothing wrong with marking as long as it's understood that it has a genuine feedback purpose and is not used to disadvantage anyone (as, e.g., in the 11-Plus). At some point, people should be able to specialise a little more, but not without losing most of the broad base. AS-levels have helped a bit in correcting the absurd situation when pupils were able to drop just about everything except for three A-level courses, but it's still a strange system.
Education certainly shouldn't be dominated by ideas about what kind of education is economically useful.