OmfiVER5 'll'a 9flLE IEDOUON
From: Lord Gage, C. J. Arthur, Russell Clarke, Gordon Evans, J. P. Warren, Mrs. C. Chataway. M. Chapman-Walker, Harold Lever, MP, G. J. B. But/in, Rev C. G. Wilson, Thomas Adler, T. A. O'Brien, R. M. Zakov itch.
The Independent Schools' Future
SIR,--I think we should be grateful to Mr Angus Maude for his penetrating article on the future of independent schools. As governor of one of them, and as a member of its finance committee, I see the very great difficulties now confronting parents and I agree that any practical measures to help theni would be controversial and difficult to devise.
But"it is disturbing to learn that there is a school of Tory reformers who are worried by the 'divisive effect of the dual system.' Surely the eventual logical outcome of such thinking is an Act of Parliament providing for 'nationalisation' of the buildings, charitable endowments, and staffs of the independent schools and, further, providing that parents who educated their children otherwise than at a state school would be guilty of a punishable offence. What sort of Toryism is this? It is no doubt true that there is a school of Socialists who would like to see legis- lation of this sort introduced forthwith, but even they hesitate to say so publicly, for there are voters who still have lingering respect for the liberty of the subject and freedom of choice.
For as Mr Hornby points out in his admirable and authoritative letter in the June 10 SPECTATOR, freedom of choice is the issue and it is rendered no less of an issue by the argument—so frequently used —that, because only the rich can at present exercise this choice, then•we needn't bother about it.
Our ancestors, who were even more obsessed with differences of religion than we are with differences of class, held that the greatest threat of all to national unity was the teaching of Roman Catholicism, whether to rich or poor. But gradually a common- sense compromise was preferred to fanatical devotion to a principle. Let us hope this will happen in the present dispute. There is surely little common sense in a social theory that permits a man to win a large untaxed prize in the pools and thereafter to spend his money in any foolish way he likes except on the education of his children.
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