My ideal would be to stream each particular subject on ability, rather than say, 'Smart people to the left, thickos to the right', which is what the 11-plus tends to boil down to. Because even two people with the same IQ level can have very, very different abilities. I think everyone should be literate and numerate and have a basic knowledge of history, geography, science etc, but beyond that, let them do what they like and are good at (it's usually the same thing).
Don't think I'm a scientically trained boor who thinks fiction is a waste of paper. ;-) I read constantly as a child, I even read books of criticism for pleasure as a teenager, and I like analysis. But for some reason I had an allergy to Eng Lit. The class killed all those pleasures because it forced them. I found some of my GSCE essays in the attic recently, and for an intelligent, widely read 15-year-old, they really are dire. (Macbeth is ambictious. You can see this by the way he wants to kill Duncan so he can be king. [Original spelling preserved, but fortunatly there's no way I can reproduce the handwriting.])
Re:
Don't think I'm a scientically trained boor who thinks fiction is a waste of paper. ;-) I read constantly as a child, I even read books of criticism for pleasure as a teenager, and
I like analysis. But for some reason I had an allergy to Eng Lit. The class killed all those pleasures because it forced them. I found some of my GSCE essays in the attic recently, and for an intelligent, widely read 15-year-old, they really are dire. (Macbeth is ambictious. You can see this by the way he wants to kill Duncan so he can be king. [Original spelling preserved, but fortunatly there's no way I can reproduce the handwriting.])