The new learning
Sir: The new learning that has recently been the subject of growing alarm among parents and others because of its baleful influence on primary school standards has its origins in certain anti-intellectual and libertarian notions. These have been largely derived from the long discarded and exploded doctrines and procedures of the progressive era in education. They seem to have been resurrected as a weapon by our educational revolutionaries in an anti-intellectual campaign designed to wipe out traditional education. The protagonists of this new 'thinking' belong to clearly observable groups. There is the Labour Party itself, offering support and exerting governmental pressure in its apparent aim to create in this country a facsimile of Soviet education as it was years ago in the 'twenties — libertarian, anti-intellectual and non-selective and generally in a state of anarchic chaos. There is also the Schools Council, actively encouraging the new look in education — and currently much concerned with dismantling the traditional exam structure, which all too obviously shows up the appalling failure of the schools today! Nor must we forget all those trendy college lecturers who have been busy filling up the minds of students with appropriate ideas on the new approach while furiously denouncing traditional education. Not to be forgotten either are the local councillors and their bureaucratic satraps, whether administrators or educational advisers, who have also insisted on the introduction of the new methods. Finally, of course, there are the teachers themselves — is it all that surprising that, in the face of so many pressures, so many of them, head teachers included, have also jumped on the trendy bandwagon in their turn?
Nor has the worst yet arrived. Now the secondary schools, already sliding into the abyss of mediocrity thanks to often rushed reorganisation, are also threatened with the absurd and harmful cult of teaching children of all abilities together amongst other harmful 'innovations'. So the retreat from sound learning continues and only continual parental
Spectator January 24, 1976 objections and protests seem likely to effect anY change for the better. Already there are some signs that the politicians are beginning to sit up and take notice — even Mr Mulley has re-discovered the value of the three Rs! Parents must demand better standards, an end to pernicious experimenting with their children and a return to educational sanity together with a real variety of choice in types of schooling.
J. H. K. Lockhart
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