Some further discussion of education and selective school
One issue is tailoring the curriculum to suit each individual. This can be interpreted in two ways- altering the subjects themselves or altering how they are taught. The idea of altering how information is taught in order to accommodate the individual tends to get a lot of cautious support. Students would have the same goals and exams, only they would be prepared in different ways. Support is cautious however, as the resources required for this, the extra teachers and the different textbooks…etc., might be difficult to achieve in practice. The tailoring of the content of courses is less controversial; all high school students are given some subject choice. As long as essential courses such as language are taught to everybody the matter tends to be loosely agreed upon.
Part of the advantage of a selective school is that the curriculum can be catered to the level of the class; in this case the smarter students. But of course this is catering to a group, not the individual. Intelligent people are as diverse (perhaps more so) as any group of individuals. Nonetheless there is some advantage in being amongst other people of similar intelligence. Individuals come to recognize the diversity, and the exchange on information between individuals is beneficial.
As modern technology changes our lives elective school will also change. An online selective school in Australia has existed since 2010. This school, Xsel,1 is not only a selective school for students; it also selects its teachers on the same basis. This addresses one of the criticisms of previous selective institutions- that the students get the same teacher situation as any other school. This online institution will also cater its curriculum to individual students, at least partly addressing the complaint that selective school teach he same as all other institutions.