Educational standards
Sir: You are very wide of the mark in your editorial (January 11) when you say Dr Boyson and Mr St John-Stevas can expect little but "opprobrium from most of the teaching ptofession" for their stand against 'progressive' methods. I have taught the last nine years in a comprehensive school and, before that, for nineteen years in grammar schools, and in all that time I have only met two or three practising teachers who approve of the new 'progressive' methods. Overwhelmingly the profession is in favour of a return to strong discipline and more formal methods. These new • ideas come from professors of education and training college lecturers and would soon be abandoned if these people actually had to take classes.
Mind you, at council meetings of the various teachers' unions it would be professional suicide to voice our real feelings on this subject. We should be stamped as reactionaries. But in the privacy of our common rooms our real opinions can be voiced, and any journalist who cares to penetrate them would hear the truth.
S. R. Atkins Senior History Master, Brynmawr Comprehensive School, Brynmawr, Brecon
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