THE BEST IN EDUCATION
Sta,—Dr. Maxwell Garnett has done well to point out the waste of brains that results from the inferior conditions in locally controlled grammar schools, but I have grave doubts about his proposed remedy, which is to segregate in super schools the best five per cent, of the grammar-school children. In the first place, the proportion he suggests is not large enough to supply the increased number of university-trained people whom the country has been shown to need. The secon'd and more serious objection is to the principle of segregation itself. Set apart from the age of thirteen in what might easily become an intellectual forcing-house, and then secluded in a university, the brainiest members of the population would be unlikely to acquire the qualities needed in the nation's leaders. Surely the boys and girls who will go to the university should be educated while at school with those who will enter the professions or fill admini- strative posts in industry and commerce.
And what of the ordinary grammar schools if Dr. Garnett's or similar proposals are adopted? Skimmed of the cream of their pupils, damaged in every side of school life by the weakness or loss of their sixth forms, staffed by less qualified teachers (for Dr. Garnett proposes an improved scale of salaries only in the select schools), the grammar schools would be condemned to a permanent inferiority. The nation's need is that the best in education should be more widely spread, not more highly concentrated in a small number of privileged schools. The local grammar schools are one of the proven successes of our educational system because they have during the past forty years achieved such an expansion of educational opportunity. Democratic principles and national interests alike require that they should now be enabled to improve on their good work and ipproach nearer to the level of the independent schools by means of smaller classes, a respectable salary scale and a reasonable measure of
independence for their governors. At present they are in danger as much from those, like Dr. Garnett, who would destroy them to the advantage of a small number of super-schools as from those who would destroy them in the name of parity because their present standards are superior to those of the new secondary schools—Yours faithfully,
95 The Drive Mansions, Fulham Road, S.W.6. J. W. HUNT.
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