Sut,—The answers to Mr. Hughes's questions are as follows. (a)
The connection between chronological age and mental age is that both are ages: both, therefore, belong to the category of time, and whichever is adopted determines (in this context) the time that a boy or girl will spend on specialised study. Weight and height belong to a different category, and are therefore irrelevant. Chronological age has the ad- vantage over mental age that it is indisputable: mental age is highly disputable, and if placed too low is likely to be actively disputed by many parents. It is often based on at least questionable grounds. (b) It is both valuable and defensible that a boy or girl should follow as general a course as possible for as long as possible, and that specialisa- tion should be correspondingly postponed ; and while the age-limit does that enforce this, it makes it much more possible. It is idle to pretend h at the precocious scientist, under the old dispensation, followed "a valuable non-specialist course" when he passed the School Certificate and entered the sixth form: in many, if not most, schools he followed a narrow specialist course which was the very antithesis of anything which might be called a liberal education, and his fellows in the arts subjects fared little bette..-.
(c) Of 'course I want "the people doing the job to determine the context and timing of the curriculum." This is what I said, and I greatly regret, on principle, the intervention of the Minister. I regard the result of his intervention, however, as educationally sound, although I deplore its necessity, and this view is shared by a great many teachers. 1 cannot accept Mr. Hughes's ex cathedra pronouncement that most schools detest and resent" the age-limit: There is no evidence for this, and my experience is that opinion is much divided on the subject and that a great many schools approve of the age-limit: and their approval Is based on their concern for the individual child, but for the individual child as a whole human being and not as a kind of disembodied mind
determined by a mental age.—I am, etc., M. L. JACKS. University of Oxford, Department of Education. 15 Norham Gardens, Oxford.
Previous page
