Educational failures
Sir: Sir Alec Clegg (31 December) attempts to draw attention away from the failure of so-called 'modern' educational theories and practices by invoking an 'educational pendulum', favouring at one time the 'loaves', at others the 'lilies' — which he seems to identify in some odd fashion with what can and what cannot be measured. This is a curious way of disguising the appalling increase in loutishness, illiteracy, in.: bility to do simple sums, and general antiintellectualism which is the product of our trendy reforms of what was once an admirable if imperfect schooling system. We can indeed measure with great ease the inability of pupils to spell, punctuate, write understandable English, do sums, speak and understand foreign languages, know some history and geography, and generally succeed in mastering an academic curriculum. But what makes Sir Alec imagine that we cannot equally measure the increase in truanting, in vandalism, in criminality, in hooliganism, and in the other aspects of behaviour which he disguises under the beguiling title of 'lilies'?
What exists, exists in some quantity, and can therefore be measured; Sir Alec clearly has some very elementary notions of what scientific measurement is all about. It has always been the excuse of those whose methods failed to produce acceptable results in education, in criminology, or in psychiatry, to claim that the good they were doing was so ethereal that it could not be measured by the vulgar, but could only be intuited by the elect. This will not do; if Sir Alec claims some virtue for the drop in educational and behavioural standards which has followed the introduction of 'modern' methods, let him spell this out in sufficient detail to test his hypotheses empirically. Until this is done his article has no assignable content, but merely seeks to hide the ineluctable reality of the failure of our modern school system behind a façade of lilies. (Professor) H.J. Eysenck Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill, London SE5
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