PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND THE FUTURE
Ste,—Mr. Lyon's proposal can be briefly summarised as a scheme designed to " cream " the elementary schools of the country for the benefit of just those schools which have hitherto set their faces steadfastly against accepting elementary school boys. In fact the public schools have come to believe in " extension of oppor- tunity " to the working class just at that moment when economic circumstances have forced them to recognise that without recruitment from that class many of them are doomed.
Since in this way the public schools would take all the best boys, they would obviously become what Mr. Lyon rather complacently assumes they are—the best schools. There are grounds for supposing that some of the non-public schools are doing work at least as valuable as some of the public schools. Were the staffing ratio comparable it is reasonable to suppose that the comparison would be even more favourable to the non-public schools. Mr. Lyon wants to have all the best boys and the large public school staffs and the public money which would make his educational paradise possible. Further, whereas in present circumstances the grammar schools can compete with the public schools as institutions of equal dignity though dissimilar status, the. public schools would then make
sure that they were the real home of the Herrenvolk. There is also one other unfortunate aspect of Mr. Lyon's proposal. The head. masters who have been so much opposed to accepting working-clam boys in their schools would be able to select all the most gentlemanly little boys from the elementary schools at the scholarship interview. The inferior grammar schools would be left with 'the difficult educa. tional task of making real citizens out of socially less desirable human material.
I know that this letter does not do Mr. Lyon personal justice, but that is because few public school men who start with all the public school assumptions realise how impertinent their point of view seems to those who like myself have been educated at one distinguished old grammar school and have the privilege of presiding over another. —Yours faithfully, N. B. C. LUCAS. The Grammar School, Midhurst, Sussex.
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