Education without reason
Sir: One wonders why, if Mr Szamuely (14 February) is concerned about producing the intellectual elite necessary to maintain a highly developed industrial civilisation, he is so satisfied with a system which manages to discard so much of the talent of the working class. H; has chosen to ignore the fact that, while the working class produces proportion- ately less talented children than the middle classes, the overall number of clever work- ing class children is greater. Yet only 26 per cent of our university entrants are of working class origin.
This is the sort of issue the real debate is all about and unless you believe, as Mr Szamuely appears to do, that the architects of the system evolved since the 1944 Act had some sort of hot line to the Deity, there is plenty of room for rational debate about 'ends and scarce means which have alterna- tive uses.' But, if this is to be the order of the day, Mr Szamuely had better leave it to others less emotionally embroiled. In the end it will do his cause more good.
R.. T. Cooper 1 White House, Mardy, Abergavenny, Mon- mouthshire Sir: Wyndham Lewis wrote somewhere of the modern war of revenge on the intellect —and certainly the current obsessive cam- paign being waged against selection in edu- cation. whether in Richmond or the heights of Hampstead or elsewhere,' seems an obvious sign that he was right! The Labour party—once the champion of the grammar schools—seems obstinately set on ushering in universal non-selective schooling by com- pulsion. Yet the sheer absurdity—and illo- gicality—in all this becomes daily more apparent. There seems every intention, for example. of prohibiting attempts to ensure that the new comprehensives receive 'a balanced intake of pupils over the whole range of ability. Such arbitrary action leads straight to the tyranny of the neighbour- hood school—which will weigh heaviest on the least affluent families whose offspring will obviously be at the mercy of the par- ticular educational standards in their area. There is the added risk of wasting expen- sive facilities and well-qualified teachers in scarce supply on schools with insufficient able pupils. Tinkering with catchment areas Sir: Mr Beckett asks (Letters, 28 February) will not remedy this situation effectively how it was that Bertrand Russell, having in- either—unless it is done with the hated
fluenced a whole generation -to refuse war selective aim! So we reach the tiaate educational absurdity: a nationwide net- work of expensive comprehensive schools,
imposed on us arbitrarily—without proper thought about the deficiencies and failings of such schooling already loudly publicised in the us, for example,—and doomed to operate inefficiently and unjustly.
Despite all the Utopian dreams of the educational planners and their egalitarian fellow-enthusiasts, this stark fact must be faced: there is no final escape from selec- tion in some form or another—if not by intelligence, then by area or by bureau- cratic fiat. Perhaps even Mr Wilson, when he gave that oft-recalled pledge that the grammar schools would be abolished over his dead body, was for once uttering a greater truth than he knew. The anxiety in America in recent years over the fate of the able minority of children, encapsulated in the all-pervading mediocrity of the neigh- bourhood comprehensive, is well known: in the post-sputnik age it is necessary to worry about more than the production of better and better drum majorettes! Even in the Soviet Union, where selection has been out- lawed since 1936, the need to compete with America and the rest of the world has forced greater attention to be paid to the education of able young mathematicians and scientists. At the same time the emerg- ence of schools specialising in particular subjects—itself tantamount to selection— has mollified the feelings of ambitious parents, suspicious of the hurlyburly of the local comprehensive school.
I. H. K. Lockhart 21B King's Avenue, Ealing, London w5
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