I went to grammar school and am still in touch with loads of old friends from our year and we all have good memories. We all went our separate ways but in recent years with the now defunct Friends Reunited and more recently Facebook, we've had a huge reunion and some smaller meet ups.
Most of us came from quite poor backgrounds and lived in either tied cottages or council houses but we were quite bright and bookish. There were only a handful of kids who had parents with professional backgrounds. A couple of teachers, and maybe an accountant and there was one girl whose Dad was a GP. We had loads of RAF kids though.
Most of us did OK and have turned out pretty good but so have friends of mine who failed the 11+ and went to secondary modern school. In those days they were taught practical skills like cookery, needlework, metalwork, technical drawing, woodwork, horticulture but to a very high level. Where would we be without plumbers, electricians, builders, hairdressers etc?
For me, grammar school widened my circle of friends as I came from a 3 class village school, it gave me the chance to learn foreign languages and to meet teachers who had a genuine interest in us and many of whom came from very poor backgrounds too which made a big impression on us and gave us something to aspire to.
I think the selection was fair and right at that time and it didn't matter how rich you were or how well connected, if your kids didn't pass the 11+ then they couldn't attend. There were a couple of kids in our village whose parents were well off and they chose to pay for their kids to go to private schools when they failed their 11+.
It's great when we have a get together because we are all teenage kids again and any airs and graces are forgotten. We all swap stories about the hard times we had .... Like a girl whose family were so hard up but she was a brilliant sportsperson and they kept a money jar on the sideboard hoping visitors would drop something in towards getting her to hockey tournaments as they didn't even have a car. She has just retired as a senior lecturer in sports studies at one of the major unis but she said because of that she has always looked out for kids who she felt were struggling financially and helped out where she could.