Sir: Many teachers and others interested in education will agree
heartily with your gloomy description of the faults and failings in much of current educational practice (January 6). Certainly the fads and fancies of so-called progressive theorists have for too long dominated the field of teacher training. Translated to the classroom, whether in the guise of the ' new ' primary schooling or some of the new methods creeping into the secondary sphere, the result has been an appalling fall in standards that has hit hardest at deprived pupils most in need of sound structured training in basic educational skills. Doing your own thing may be all right in prescribed doses for the more cosseted darlings of the middle class home, but it is precious little help to less fortunate offspring!
The situation has been made worse in so many instances by the equally unwise and unthinking plunge into comprehensive school ing that has produced already confusion, if not chaos, in areas previously well served by smaller, much more human, and certainly more efficient grammar and secondary schools. Again we have been badly let down by so-called experts, who could not be bothered to acquaint themselves with the depressing history of non-selective schooling in other countries, especially the US. Blinded by egalitarian fanaticism, the trendies of the Left have jumped with alacrity on to the comprehensive bandwagon, jettisoning in the process the grammar schools that they once correctly revered as the friend of the working class child. Tory negativism in the same sphere cannot be forgiven either: many parents are discovering to their cost that variety in secondary schooling these days is increasingly a privilege reserved for those who can afford independent schooling!
Some sort of national standard
in basic education at various stages in a child's education may well offer some assurance that traditional education and its values won't disappear entirely in an age of gimmicks and tomfoolery disguised as advanced pedagogy. Certainly the kind of trendy dilution of the present exam system currently being got ready by the Schools Council, must be sternly resisted as yet another sure recipe for even lower standards in the future!
J. H. K. Lockhart 21B King's Avenue, Ealing, London W5
Previous page
