bOWN THE 'C' STREAM
Snt,--Regretfully I must quarrel with David Hol- brook ('Down the C Stream,' September 22), all the More so since his formal recognition of 'streaming' as anti-social and individually harmful seemed to rile to denote new insight and sympathies.
For what finally was the purpose of those 'inter- nal examinations' which he set his children? If Beloe and external examinations were justifiably con- d, emned, what sanction is there for these? If a tolerant' headmaster, why exams at all? bnn't they minister to the socially and morally obnoxious practice of 'streaming'? Aren't they, in fact, the very tools of that discrimination he de- Plot-es? And surely, in the kind of teaching D.H. is t,41king about, the idea of them as incentives is un- 'enable as that of an unthinking or politic surrender to conventional demand is unworthy. It was, perhaps, a little chastening to find him at gie end equating 'non-academic' with 'less intel-
ligent.' This scarcely argues the complete dissolution of those time-honoured mental barriers.
Wayside Cottage, Foxton, Combs
PETER DEAN
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