Compulsory state education,

devised originally (if I remember right)
by Bismarck so that the population
could read the details of Verboten notices,
functions nicely as a means of Keeping People
in their Place, through class-based vetting
and judgement. But of course they allow
a variable, token amount of 'social mobility'
in order to veil a cruel and expensive system
with a thin veneer of dispassionate nobility.