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Linear thinking is big in the First World. In highly individualized societies, where choices start with birth, failure also is individualized. It is a way of dealing with the ‘losers.’ Since everyone has a choice, nobody is a victim and, hence, no one but oneself can be blamed.

Around us it works somewhat like this:

If you live in the right neighborhood, you can send your children to the right pre-school that will get them into the right primary school. That primary school will then prepare them (i.e., coach and train or, bluntly put, condition them) to pass the selective examinations to get into the right secondary school.

And getting into the right secondary school figures prominently in countries that have privatized education such as the US and Britain.

In those countries state education simply won’t do. It’s a known fact that is rarely questioned. Everyone seems to have accepted the educational chicken ladder as the way to personal success (i.e., Oxbridge and onward into the mills of accounting offices and law firms). The pecking order is harsh and the losers are many and sorrowfully young.

In the late sixties, Britain passed an education reform that introduced the Comprehensive School, a system where every child is admitted and subsequently moves along according to her or his abilities.

But it immediately came under attack and was ultimately undermined by the parents from well-to-do areas who insisted that differences are in fact good. Of course, these same parents are able to make sure that in a soup bowl of inequalities their children will float like oil. Needless to say these children are by no means smarter, just more privileged.

In return that has led the middle class to fear for the well-being of their offspring. After all, no one wants to be stuck with the hoi polloi especially when entrance into Cambridge or Oxford is at stake. So better to take out loans and pay whatever the tuition, tutor, or training sessions may cost to make the grade and get them into one of the cadre academies.

It’s always the same. As soon as education gets tied to income it becomes unpleasant and on average still mediocre. Or have I missed all the fanfare announcing the future generation of geniuses pouring out of the gates of these skewed systems?

At some point, of course, the insanity is exposed. Children who graduate from so-called elite institutions don’t all have successful lives, they aren’t all well off, and they certainly aren’t all happy.

But guess what? They must have made some wrong choices along the way. Maybe if they had networked a little better and if only they had joined the right country club, or...

However, whatever they did or didn’t do, one thing is for sure: you can’t blame their parents.

And maybe that’s what it’s all about.