Educational failures
Sir: However much teachers' organisations may fulminate and the numerou,s other guilty parties find convincing reasons why it must be so, the public at large have reason to be grateful to Dr Rhodes Boyson for exposing a fragment of the appalling disaster that masquerades as modern education.
One point which is nearly always overlooked in these matters is the quite remarkable educational value of fear. It must surely be obvious that the few remaining grammar schools recognise the peril of their position and consequently need no persuasion for both staff and pupils to do a little work. Before the abolition of the elevenplus it was like this in primary schools and since both staff and pupils were anxious to establish their competence there was a general and exhausting conspiracy to work. (In the private sector Common Entrance was less effective because the malingerers could usually persuade someone to accept them. Moreover, the benefit of the fear of failure persisted in the secondary modern school where most of the more capable pupils remembered their failure at eleven and gladly embraced a second chance to prove their ability. The results were apparent in an ever-increasing tide of '0' and 'A' level successes — often challenging the unmotivated superiority of the grammar school. (And, of course, it was the selection process that was blamed.) Today such pupils are lost in the complacent hinterland of a vast educational establishment — somewhere in the indeterminate zone of CSE — or — if they are remarkably fortunate, dual entry. There is always someone brighter to depress their self-esteem and there is no longer the goad of evident failure.
Perhaps none of this would matter quite so much if only the comprehensive system had not been introduced as something requiring a new methodology. At the precise moment when immense pride in standards, rigorous discipline and devoted work were all desperately required, the actual ethos was an unattractive compound of libertarian irresponsibility, moral cowardice and sheer stupidity. At this idealistic moment staffrooms became animated as never before with the jargon of hucksters seeking promotion on the tiersof a new (non-teaching) hierarchy. Had it been possible for comprehensive schools to come into existence at a more favourable moment we might have found that the experiment would have been well worth while.
Michael Tatham Clod Hall, Odell, Bedford
Previous page
