SIR,—I think Mr. Brogan's secondary moderns sound a promising lot.
They are shrewd and good-humoured—' "Miss So-and-So is too good for us."' They are inde- pendent and resourceful—`A large number of them
had interesting hobbies and out-of-school activities of a surprising variety.' They are touchingly opti- mistic about the future, in spite of finding themselves cruelly consigned in childhood, along with about 75 per cent, of their fellows, to the ranks of the second- raters, the left-overs, the also-rans—'The world out- side is Eldorado, to which their eyes and thoughts are ever straining'—and no wonder.
Their lack of schoolboy honour is, of course, less pleasing; but one wonders why they should find tale- bearing worth while. There must 'be countless parents and teachers who have met this common habit and cured it inside a week, not by preaching schoolboy honour, but simply by turning a deaf ear.
But clearly what worries Mr. Brogan most about these children is their lack of faith in the education that the State is, with the utmost care and fore- thought, handing out to them. 'The school had nothing to offer them that they believed to be of any value whatever.'
May I suggest that this is a part of the price we pay for the eleven-plus examination? So long as this test remains, primary education will be geared to it; and once the primary stage is past, it is late to start to build on new educational foundations for all those—the vast majority—who, inevitably, 'fail the scholarship.' In these circumstances, it is natural for many children to sink into apathy while waiting for their fifteenth birthday to bring them release from the classroom. It is likewise natural for some of them to kick the pretty paint with which edu- cation authorities seek to camouflage what is perhaps (for all its apparent administrative convenience) one of the most monstrous educational blunders of all time—the grouping of large numbers of average children, not with their cleverer contemporaries, but with a minority who are barely educable.—Yours faithfully, FREDA E. TURNER Cam pdowns, Carlyon Bay, St. Austell, Cornwall
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