Speech and manners
Sir: Those who want to abolish private Schools frequently point to the advantage that 'posh' speech and good manners give a child. They want to abolish this advantage — by levelling down presumably.
Levelling up in this respect has always been possible — but no one has tried it. If their real aim was equality, emphasis could have been put years ago on speech and manners in all our schools.
It would present difficulties expecially since the fiction that rough speech and manners are somehow 'sincerer' than the other kind, seems accepted by the young. But it could be done— especially if started in nursery schools. Their is no real reason why children in every school in the country shouldn't learn the arts that private schools teach — how to speak clearly and intelligently (and I am not talking about accent), how to listen attentively and the basic elements of good behaviour.
Then there would be an end to the complaint that speech divides the nation. That this remedy has formed no part of anyone's campaign merely confirms my belief that the reformers aren't really concerned with equality — they are concerned with dragging those they envy down to gutterspeech, inarticulacy and slovenliness in thinking. Such a population is easy meat for any demagogue.
Parents whose children fall behind in speech and manners as soon. as they get to a comprehensive (or other large) school, should not accept this as inevitable, it is not. With goodwill all children can be taught what a few are taught at private schools. We should .ask "why aren't they?"
K. J. Webb 3 Saltems Lane, Fawley, Hants
Previous page
