Educational failures
Sir: I note with regret that Alec Clegg has not taken up my invitation to spell out in sufficient detail the precise nature of the virtues he claims as attending the drop in educational and behavioural standards which has followed the introduction of modern methods to make discussion possible. Instead he seems to rely on sarcasm and rhetorical questions.
He asks whether we can believe that formal and traditional teaching in most continental countries accounts for the fact that there is `no vestige of juvenile disruption' there, no doubt expecting an answer in the negative. Perhaps he would like to accompany me to some football matches in Germany and France, and compare the behaviour there with that unfortunately so common among the followers of Manchester United, Leeds, and other clubs.
Unfortunately continental countries have not been immune to the errors of educational 'permissiveness', but the rot has not set in to the same extent, and, perhaps as a consequence, vandalism, loutishness, and other forms of antisocial behaviour are less widespread. Unfortunately our educational establishment, like the Bourbons, has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing; they might benefit from taking Sir Alec's question seriously, and look at what is going on elsewhere. They might even find that the most left-wing countries like the USSR, the GDR and Czechoslovakia show both an adherence to the formal and traditional teaching methods which in common with Sir Alec they deplore, high educational standards, and a very much lower rate of anti social behaviour than is common in this country. Correlations do not necessarily imply causation, but at least they might make us think.
(Professor) H. J. Eysenck Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill, London SE5
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