Fighting back
EDUCATION STUART MACLURE
The liberals have had it all their own way for so long in matters of educational theory that it comes as a refreshing change to read a vigorous outburst from those who, in this con- text, are content to be classed as reactionary. Fight for Education, the Critical Quarterly's 'Black Paper' edited by Professor C. B. Cox and Mr A. E. Dyson, is a collection of articles of uneven weight, but taken as a whole it mounts a lively attack on the 'progressive collapse' which the editors believe is as much a threat to education as it was to Ronan Point. Every sit-in and demonstration brings the back- lash nearer. Enoch Powell and Edward Short have both recognised, in their different ways, the political truth of this. Fight for Education is an attempt to put some intellectual stuffing into it and direct it against progressive educational ideas as a whole, not just at the students.
However, the universities and the cause and consequences of student unrest' loom large in this symposium. The main conclusion which runs through successive contributions is that much of the trouble stems from the speed and extent of the post-Robbins expansion. For example, D. C. Watt, in an interesting article on LSE, describes the history of overcrowding and understaffing which preceded the rapid growth in the 'sixties. 'What folly,' he writes, . . to pass over an opportunity to raise . . . standards of selection of students in favour of an expansion of numbers such as to disrupt . . . intellectual cohesion and render it nn- possible . . even to give the extra students the same standard of attention enjoyed by . . . existing students.'
Perhaps the most considerable piece in the symposium is by Bryan Wilson on 'Youth Culture, the Universities and Student Unrest.' He, too, blames the dilution of university institu- tions: 'Most central of all the causes of decay has been expansion. More has meant worse. This has not been so much a matter of admit- ting people with less intellectual capacity, but of admitting people who were less committed, had less self-control, and who were less ade- quately socialised for the university experience. The increased influx of people less prepared to take on university values, has come just at the time when universities themselves—troubled by amorphousness, uncertainty and loss of their specific character—were less capable of com- municating the spirit and values of academic study. The contemporary explosiveness of students is the best commentary on the expan- sionist policy of the recent past.'
The strongest condemnation is reserved for dissident members of the academic staff: 'Rapid growth in some disciplines has led to the recruitment of junior staff who have them- selves suffered all the inadequacies of the ex- panding universities: they cannot transmit university values because they never really re- ceived them. . . . High aspirations, sufficient achievement to give a taste of success, and com-
petition that made further success difficult—
were enough to cause some to displace their anger on to the system. The universities were rotten. Sociology, in particular, had a fund of theories that could be used as "scientific" ex-
planations of the corruptness of the system.' The complaint is familiar enough—expansion has meant too many new students and staff of the wrong sort. This has changed the nature and quality of university life. But linking these ideas, and attempting to make them part of a larger and more formidable critique, is the =attempt to show that what is now hitting the universities is, in Bryan Wilson's words, the consequences of 'the growth of dissident enter- tainment values; Spock-ism in child-rearing; "free-expression" in early education; the per- missive morality advocated by self-styled "liberals" . .
It is an argument which has its attractions for some—it is, after all, a more sophisticated version of the familiar speech-day oration to the effect that they don't teach them anything nowadays and anyway, youth is going to the dogs. Unfortunately few of the writers evince any first-hand knowledge of primary education which emerges as one of the main targets of attack. No doubt it is there, but it is concealed well enough to make many of the recurrent pleas for rigour sound no more than petulant. It is odd how university peo'ple love to talk about intellectual rigour and academic excel- lence in terms of the highest approval when, in fact, all they intend to talk about is them- selves.
My feeling is that there is a real cause to champion—intellectual rigour does need to be defended and there is an all too prevalent soft- headed progressivism among many who in- fluence educational thought—but the way to achieve this is to look for better ways of in- dividual learning, not to trot out conventional arguments for highly selective schools and subject-centred teaching. Nobody with any sensitivity who visits a really good primary school can take seriously the vapourings about `do as you like' educational theories attributed in apparent good faith to the exponents of the modern primary school, in some of the more ignorant obiter dicta in this collection. But this doesn't mean that the gap between the best and worst is not uncomfortably wide. The wilder excesses of child-centred education certainly deserve to be exposed.
As a challenge to the weak-minded liberalism of the educational theorists, the trouble with this symposium is that it is not as tough or rigorous as it pretends to be. Palpable hits are scored on many of the targets, but a nostalgic lack of realism is common to most of the con- tributions: why couldn't they have left us alone to get on with it? Why can't we have more money and less students? Why won't the students accept our authority or just go away? There is no sign of any realistic appreciation that universities which are so completely dependent on public funds need to define more carefully what they mean by academic freedom if they are to defend the right citadel. When it comes to the stewardship of money, whole- hogging academic freedom has little to com- mend it.
There is no recognition here that the growth of numbers of which they complain is the same growth which is revolutionising secondary edu- cation—nor yet that the social changes which are bringing first-generation students to the universities and the sixth forms go a great deal deeper than Dr Spock on child-rearing or Piaget on child development. Any right wing realism has got to come to terms with this and with the fact that the expansion of secondary education (and, therefore, pressure for higher education) has still a long way to go. This calls for a more positive response than a clarion call to batten down the hatches.
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