SIR,—I was very interested in the series of articles on
education, partly because I attend a public school, but mainly because I feel that education is the basis
of, society, and if we wish to change that society we must first change the system of education. One fault of the present educational system as I see it is that too much attention is given to the wishes of the parents and politicians and not enough to the feelings of the child.
It is only natural that if the present generation is allowed to mould the life and character of the next generation they will tend to make this life and character as similar to their own as possible. Thus in reality each generation will be the same as its predecessor, only a little artificial 'progress' being made. This would be acceptable if we could be sure that the present basis of civilisation was ideal, but this is highly unlikely in a system in which men spend the first half of their lives being repressed by others and in the process gaining sufficient malice against civilisation to spend the rest of their lives repressing others. This repressive theory is based on the idea that the older you are the more ex- perienced you are, but I fail to see how this fund of second-hand experience can be of any use to the growing generation.
This leads me to the conclusion that we should allow the child to choose his own education, to choose what to learn and what to discard. I feel that in so doing he will, in fact, learn far more, rather than less, as he will be making full use of his natural thirst for knowledge, instead of having a great deal of insignificant rubbish artificially drummed into him with the sole purpose of enabling him to pass exams.
The idea of 'freedom schools' naturally meets with many and .varied objections, but many of these are refuted by the results of those 'free' schools already in existence. For my part, I firmly believe that the adoption of this system of education would be a major step forward in the history of mankind and would go a long way towards ending the hatred and frustration of today.—Yours faithfully, R. J. ALLARD Dauntseyv School, West Lavington, Devizes, Wilts
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