In his 1971 book, Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich wrote the following:
“Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby "schooled" to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is "schooled" to accept service in place of value.”
Illich is saying that we filter people based on processes - how, where and in what manner your skills were acquired - rather than simply on the skills themselves.
"An individual with a schooled mind conceives of the world as a pyramid of classified packages accessible only to those who carry the proper tags."
"The pupil is thereby "schooled" to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new."
In each instance, the true underlying target is substituted for a metric or measurement of that target. The process by which prerequisite skills were acquired has been substituted for the actual prerequisite skills.
"In certain cases acceptance into a learning program aimed at a specific skill might presuppose competence in some other skill, but it should certainly not be made to depend upon the process by which such prerequisite skills were acquired."
Illich was not suggesting that all forms of measuring and filtering based on skill should be abolished, rather that they should be purely based on skill, rather than arbitrary things like what school you attended.