SIR,---I read Charles Brand's article. 'The Teacher's Lot,' and my
hackles rose at the tenor of his ,argu- ment, though I would echo many of his asides.
Mr, Brand's article seeks to perpetuate the fallacy that the - really hard work in teaching is done by graduate teachers in grammar schools. (One is almost led to believe that he' would say that the hardest workers were Oxford graduates.) I am twenty-seven years of age and I teach in •a secondary modern school. I have a degree which Mi. Brand would probably consider !potty' and 'little' (a First, but gained at 'one of those Noncon- formist holes in Wales'). I do not coach boys for Oxford and Cambridge entrance. My pupils do not eveiS aspire 'to GCE Ordinary Level. I do. however, try to help children who are not perhaps gifted, to experience some of the pleasure and excitement which literature can offer.
If I read new books, Mr. Brand tells me, it is because I may wish to 'show off.' Two weeks ago I bought Mr. David Holbrook's English for Maturity. My reading of that book will, I believe, make me a better teacher than I would otherwise have been. I am now reading The Long Revolution. My pupils will probably never hear its title mentioned; certainly, they will never read the book. But some of our dis- cussion classes will perhaps take a different turn be- cause 1 have gained a little more insight into sonic problem we may one day discuss.
If Mr. Brand had argued his case as one which applied to all enthusiastic teachers (are there no nine- to-four teachers in grammar schools? I seem to remember some), he might have been persuasive. Instead, he has simply said that sonic children and their teachers arc more equal than others. This is intellectual arrogance and special pleading; it is no real argument.--Yours faithfully,
*
Previous page
