This makes me think you were yourself a bad student.
Bad students drag down good ones. Fact.
I haven't observed or experienced this "fact" during my education.
I was always one of the best students - at primary school, at secondary school, at high school and at the university and even at private art classes and at private English classes.
And yet - I have the same views as Lenka.
Also, Lenka is intelligent and logical, so I personally doubt that she was a bad student.
if you make a bunch of smart kids artificially limit their potential - so that the other 70% of idiots could feel good?
How is the potential of smart kids being "artificially limited"? Smart or gifted kids simply do more - and that's often encouraged by the teacher. My art teacher at secondary school could see that I could draw and so she talked me into joing her free extra art classes after school. She inspired me to go to art school.
My Polish teacher at high school wanted to make me take part in the so called
olimpiada.
As for English - I decided to take private English classes at high school on my own, because I liked English and wanted to be better at it. This didn't end there though - I was also consciously watching news, films and TV series and reading books in English, because I knew that will help me improve my English (and because I simply enjoyed it).
In Poland, at 14 (just year after Kania's cut off point) kids choose secondary school and at that stage the more gifted get swooshed together and the same goes for less gifted. No interference
Exactly. So there's "selection" taking place later on. Everybody knew what were the best schools in my city and all the smart kids wanted to get in. I'd be trying to get in one of them too if it wasn't for the fact that I chose an art school (to my Polish teacher's great disappointment lol :)).
And, of course, there were entrance exams for my art school - from art subjects. There was drawing and painting exam, sculpture exam (I had to take private classes before that, because I never did any sculpting) and history of art exam (and, again, I took private lessons with a former teacher from that art school to increase my chances). Besides the entrance exams they were also looking at your previous academic results. The best results from both exams and previous academic results would land you where I personally wanted to be - at "painting and gilding" specialization. So, you can imagine how beyond happy I was when I got in :)))