School Selection is wrong

Once again the Schools selection process has come under criticism as some one who used to be a Tory, no that is not quite right I am still a Tory but not a member of the New Conservatives led by David Cameron, I believe in freedom of choice. Yet in some cases choice for one group of people can mean restrictions for others and I sorry to say education is that case. I went to secondary school in the 1960’s at the time when all these so called Educationalist starting experimenting with our School and children and in most cases these experiments have failed as can be seem by standards of today’s youth. One thing in my day was the only selection was Grammar School, Technical School and Secondary Modern I went to Westlands leaving at 15 years of with a very good basic education suitable for me to cope with adult life. Yet I had no choice in those days if you lived West side of Park Road (this used to be the middle part of the town) you went to Westlands and if you lived East side you went to St John’s (SCC) and every school was expected to produce well educated rounded pupils by the time they left and in most cases they did. At Westlands there were no GCSE or CSE etc when you left you either got manual work, served an apprenticeship or went to colleges to get a GCE, also all secondary school were single sexed.
I may be looking at these events with rose tinted glasses but I honestly can not remember having any of the problems schools have today, It may not be possible to return to those halcyon days, if that what they were but the latest batch of educationalist have travelled all over the World and have said the countries with the highest standards in education and youth behaviour were those who had single sexed schools, made children sit in rows facing the teacher had codes of discipline such as no talking in class, no running in the corridors, no swearing etc strangely enough this reminds me of when I was at school! Why is it that modernisers look on the past with disdain and obliterate everything that is not new? You have to know and learn from the past to know where your future is.