[xamuel]

>I stupidly thought the goal of education was for everyone to learn, but I guess the process of education is to stratify the populace.

Stratification is built in to the etymology of the word "graduate". Compare a "graduated beaker", which is a beaker with measurements printed on it so that you can tell how much fluid it contains.

Part of the problem is that schools have conflicting goals. The education goal you mention is the goal everyone talks about, but few of the students genuinely care about it. What they're mainly there for is career advancement: to be graduated above others so they can get better employment. This becomes clear if you imagine what an institution truly devoted to nothing but education might be like. Such an institution might be like a movie theater which plays exclusively documentaries. It doesn't take much imagination to realize how well that would do: it would go bankrupt because almost no-one would want to pay money for it.

Politicians identify school with education, and use that to create talking points about how everyone should be educated. But in the context of the other goal, of graduating and distinguishing people, it makes zero sense to have everyone graduate. That would be like a graduated beaker with only two measurements, "empty" and "full".