Education: perpetuating inequality in society?

This is my first post, so I guess I'll start with something most people are familiar with.

Education. This word has been the centre of attention in many societies past and present. The Chinese started using it as a way to select capable men to serve in the government. The Romans created the first public schools. Now, in the twenty-first century, people turn to it as a solution to break out of the cycle of poverty. But is that really the case? In the country where I live(Singapore), there has been reports that more than half the students in elite schools hail from families with at least one graduate parent, and this percentage increases with the academic performance of the schools. So it seems, the education system is only meant to serve academically inclined parents (who are most probably richer as well)!

Now, what is going on here? Few reasons involved, but I guess what I'm going to say next might not be the kindest of words one would wish to hear. The answer is simple: not everyone is born as intellectually inclined! Many assume that education provides a level ground for students of different family backgrounds to excel despite their parent's inability to perform well in the past, and their rationale is simple, that the rules are the same for everyone: everyone does the same tests, everyone studies the same chapters in each subject, the list isn't too long but at first glance, it's really convincing isn't it?

This is when nature sets in. Intellect is a heritable trait, and it doesn't change much throughout our lives. If anything, it can only decrease due to an unfortunate accident, but it will never increase. Throwing everyone into the same education system is just allowing children of academically inclined parents to continue their parents' legacy and leave the rest further behind. If this isn't enough for you to understand, I'll use the analogy of a fencing session I was watching. There were two fencers sparring, and I was watching it with a few other acquaintances. The rules governing their actions were definitely the same. They were trained under the same coach so they definitely had the same "stances" and "tactics". The scoring system for both were the same. Level playing field, no? Nope, one of them was destined to lose out. And the reason was simple, one of them was shorter, with a shorter arm that couldn't reach as far as the other. How is his sword supposed to reach the other fencer if his hand is shorter to begin with? Just the same way, even if both students have the same training, the same tests and all, the one with a higher intellect would be bound to score better than his peer. And that student who scored better probably inherited his intellect from his parents who were probably smarter than his peer's parent. It's just natural selection in the making, and education simply acts as the vehicle in which natural selection acts.

Another reason is that academically inclined parents are more likely to have a higher income, which allows them to spend more resources on their children's education, sending them to "cram school" as they term it in Japan and Korea, and "tuition" in Singapore. Other than this aspect of education, students of the parents mentioned above are able to learn other skills like music and sports, which gives them a further advantage over their peers who were born into less academically inclined families.

Of course, there are always exceptions, namely our favourite "rags to riches" motivational success stories. But the fact that we always gasp in awe when we hear such stories is in itself proof that such situations do not occur very often, and that to achieve that is out of the ordinary. I'm not saying that we should abolish former education- I believe this is one of the reasons development is so rapid in modern times. However, education has simply taken on the role of natural selection, selecting against less academically inclined students, and selecting for academically inclined students. Even without it, the same effect would have been achieved in the knowledge based economy of today's world. After all, it is impossible to stop a process that has operated for  as long as organisms have existed, to stop the process that lead to the birth of us humans. That however, would not change the fact that education has, contrary to popular belief, not lead to a more "equal" society, but a more "unequal" society where the same group of people simply continue reaping the benefits with their natural gifts- intellect.