Eleven Plus and Solipsistic Experiences

Is the whole of the eleven plus journey one of reacting to our solipsistic experience? Solipsism is to do with believing that only one's own experiences and existence can be known with certainty.

If you hear an impassioned speech in the play ground to do with the eleven plus your could test the veracity of the statements being made by asking all concerned to take a vote.

"The date of the eleven plus is being changed. I know because I phoned the education department."

"Let us take a vote. Mary says the date is going to change. Shirley and I have heard otherwise. Who thinks the date will certainly change?"

Thus voting could be a dangerous course. Many of us prefer to be loved than reviled. (Don't take sides in the playground on Eleven Plus matters.)

We all remember the words in the Birmingham graveyard:

Here lies the mother of children seven,
Four on earth and three in heaven;
The three in heaven preferring rather
To die with mother than live with father.

Too much collusion over the eleven plus may bring out other emotions:

Papa loved mamma
Mamma loved men
Mamma's in the graveyard
Papa's in the pen.

Carl Sandburg (1878 to 1967)