Debasement of education
Sir: It is not only direct grant schools (Rhodes Boyson, December 28) that are threatened or private schools either in the current doctrinaire and anti-intellectual climate of education in these islands. The whole fabric of traditional education as we have known it is menaced with extinction in so many ways. The headlong dash into non-selective schooling has not helped: comprehensive schools have long had a bad name and not just in London — where the current anarchic situation most
resembles a crazy caricature of Soviet schooling in the twenties! — but else where in Britain and, of course, all over the world. 'New' teaching methods, usually dredged up from the heyday of the progressive era, add to the havoc: teaching in mixed ability groups has brought disaster to language instruction and other subjects. The cult of equality is carried to lunatic extremes: academic achievement is ignored or derided. There is obviously a movement afoot to eliminate or emasculate the examination system, ostensibly for "democratic" motives, but really because exams reveal with appalling candour the collapse of standards. In addition, the position of the dedicated class teacher has been eroded, if not destroyed, as schools are dominated by administrative elites, too often insulated from the stern realities of the classroom. Education is increasingly a matter of ideology and doctrinaire prejudice rather than the advancement of learning. By an appalling irony, the chief victims of this new look in education are not just the conscientious teachers of yore but working class children, cooped up in neighbourhood schools that are racked by indiscipline and doomed to mediocre standards!
Any attempt to criticise all this folly is usually denounced as distorted and unfair; yet, as education totters towards chaos, even the apostles of togetherness have been thrown on the defensive: now disruptive youngsters face the prospect of actually being segregated from their fellows — a privilege strenuously denied to the gifted few who once flourished in the much derided grammar schools. In the end, education will have to return to commonsense and be rescued from the bigots, the fanatics, and the subversives who see in the ruin of our schools a means to social disruption on a grand scale, J. H. K. Lockhart 21B King's Avenue, London W5
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