LETTERS Terrible teachers
Sir: Melanie Phillips is to be congratulated on her stringent criticism of educational lib- eralism in our time (`The strange death of liberal Britain', 17 September) and the harm it has inflicted. I write as a former teacher who in his time fell foul of these pernicious theorists — and whose career was ruined as a result with no compensa- tion for years of hard and conscientious work. Nor, I am certain, was my experience unique.
My first inkling that things were going badly wrong at primary level came when I noticed growing illiteracy among entrants to secondary school. I found myself increas- ingly having to teach reading, spelling, ele- mentary grammar and even legible hand- writing. When I mentioned this to a local educational bureaucrat, he accused me of professional disloyalty. Later, when con- fronted with a sudden rush into non-selec- tive schooling, I declined to sign my accep- tance of non-selective schooling, mixed ability teaching at all levels, less emphasis on exam work and academic achievement — and less emphasis on formal schooling and discipline. My career in state schools was over and what was left of my years as a teacher took place in a small, obscure inde- pendent institution where I could at least call my educational soul my own, free from the lunacies let loose in the name of a false progress.
Apart from the ruin of the careers of teachers who could not accept the rush into educational folly, the chief sufferers from these misguided methods and absurd notions were children from working-class homes. Middle-class parents could still tuck their offspring away in fee-paying schools, less affected by progressive follies. This sit- uation continues today, so that a generation of innumerate and semi-literate youngsters finds itself ill-equipped for life in an era of much unemployment when good schooling is vital. And yet the high priests of educa- tional enlightenment still preach their piffle and exercise their tyranny over schools, teachers and others foolish enough to believe their nonsense.
John Lockhart
21B King's Avenue, London W5
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