Letters
Worse to come
Sir: I liked Auberon Waugh's pungent description (2 September) of British edu cation as 'the wettest and sloppiest outside America'. Alas, dear Mr Waugh, our trendy doctrinaires and their bureaucratic and political allies have not yet done their worst.
Current machinations to combine CSE and 0 level exams, plus the intention to water down A levels, seem certain to degrade standards still further. No wonder university courses in some cases are having to be lengthened. Perhaps the ultimate aim is to allow college entrance, suitably subsidised by the taxpayer, for all on request, no matter how moronic.
It is interesting to observe how the Chinese have recently reversed their own dis astrous flirtation during the so-called Cul tural Revolution with equally lunatic and damaging egalitarian notions of education.
For Chinese pupils and students, it is back to hard work and examinations — and the kind of elitism shunned by the NUT, the Schools Council and, of course, Shirley Williams (who seems to be keeping mum about her own impressions during her recent visit to China).
I am glad that Mr Norman St John Stevas has also been there of late. I have tended to regard him — perhaps a little unfairly — as one of the leading apostles of Tory 'liberality' in education of a kind that sends shivers down my unbending old-fashioned spine. It is to be hoped that Tories will summon up the courage to jump off the trendy educational bandwagon and cast a cold and critical eye, once and for all, on the current doctrinaire gobbledegook mas querading as sound educational practice — and which has led so unnecessarily to the ruin of the schools. J. H. K. Lockhart 21B King's Avenue, London W5
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