Basic Slag Richard Playlet-, R. D. Greaves,
W. G. Boyd. Margaret Cowing
Kariba Grace Scott Ronald Knox's New Testament Michael Ivens The Lost Tribes of Reading P. E. Fairbalrn Intrusion Paul Ries Collin Monster Babies Robert Conquest Immigration G. L. Heygate The TVA Professor D. W. Brogan James Stephens Hilary Pyle
BASIC SLAG
SIR,—Mr. Brand's souises are hardly worth noticing, but just for the record I think one or two matters raised in his article ought to be put in perspective.
1. Almost all primary school teachers are trained in college and qualified by examination to practise the skill of teaching, and a definite salary differential is made between those who are qualified and those who are not. In grammar schools, on the other hand, there are many graduates teaching who do not, in fact, possess a teaching qualification in ad- dition to their academic qualifications, yet they receive almost exactly the same salary as their colleagues who do.
2. The 'starry-eyed grammar school first-former' that Mr. Brand quotes as saying, 'I like this school because you are made to work hard. At my last school the headmaster didn't believe in work,' was quite clearly not very intelligent if he ever said any such thing. He would not have been in a grammar school at all unless he had satisfied a whole complex of authorities that he was, by the age of eleven, above average in intelligence and the application of that intelligence, highly literate, able in arithmetical skills and reasonably know- ledgeable in a general way. Somewhere between the ages of five and eleven he was helped to reach this level—it might even have been that he achieved it during his years in the primary school:
3. Of course there is a difference between recruit- ing teachers for eight-year-olds and for the upper sixth, but the implied assumption that Mr. Brand makes that the former need to be little more than benevolent child-minders whereas the latter should be intellectual giants is not only downright stupid, but also quite misses the point. The point, Mr. Brand, is that the more intelligent and better edu- cated all teachers are, the greater their value to all our schools.
4. Mr. Brand's 'super-graduate' mathematician at a maximum of LI,600 is already earning some a week more than his primary school colleague on his maximum. Whatever would Mr. Brand's barber say about that? He would possibly resort to a quick swig of bay rum to steady his nerves. Although I am a primary school teacher, I have no particular quarrel with this present differential, but I do quarrel with Mr. Brand's view that this mathe- matician should continue to receive differential in- crements for the rest of his teaching career. In any occupation there is a maximum basic salary some- where along the line, and after that further increases are earned through promotion.
I have no intention of denigrating the work of my grammar school colleagues, but I sincerely trust that the majority of them has a greater appre- ciation and understanding of the primary stage of education thait Mr. Brand appears to have.
RICHARD PLAYFER
21 Boundary Road, West Kirby, Cheshire
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