The enemy within
Sir: Your correspondent, June Blane, has ably enumerated the pernicious influences at work in the media in the current attempt to in- augurate a kind of trendy utopia. Chief target of this campaign is undoubtedly the younger genera- tion; and it is much to the credit of young people that they show such a sturdy resistance, in the main, to much of the current in- doctrination, Unfortunately to- day's educational thinking still emanates largely from progressive quarters. The same moth-eaten trendy package is continually put before us: more and more com- prehensive schools—despite their dismal record over the years else- where—fewer and fewer exams, lessons and traditional teaching. In short, a return to the worst ex- cesses of the long defunct progres- sive era—sans discipline, sans learn- ing, sans everything that distin- guishes education from a chaos of meaningless and increasingly fran- tic activity!
In more general terms, youth has got to be given something better than the kind of largely amoral, coldly clinical and basically un- idealistic philosophy of living cur-
rently on offer. The older genera- tion has got to stop trying so hard to be with it, for the elderly adole- scent cuts an even more foolish figure usually than his juvenile counterpart! Parents have got to say 'No!' and mean it and teachers must be seen as something better than impoverished figures of fun —with or without leads! And final- ly we must stop allowing the mot- ley horde of trendy journalists and commentators, woolly-minded sociologists and others from divid- ing us all up into idiotic categories whose behaviour is then prescribed for them by the progressive sooth- sayers!
J. A. K. Lockhart 21b King's Avenue, London w5
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