Monmouth
Ways of teaching
Sir: Your leading article, 'Learning to think' (25 April) would have been printed ten years ago had the facts which you deplore been known outside the world of education. Elementary teaching has collapsed because teachers have meekly accepted the fads pressed on them by certain 'experts' in training colleges, the inspectorate and in print. Some years ago primary school teachers were advised not to teach the alphabet because pupils cannot consult the dictionary, the encyclopaedia, the atlas or the directory, or file papers. Pupils have actually been selected for grammar schools and presented themselves without knowing the alphabet.
Regularly my headmaster took me aside to tell me not to teach proofs of geometrical theorems or how to state them correctly — advice which I blithely ignored, and justified my policy by an annual sheaf of 0-level passes with high grades. Similarly a training college lecturer supervising a student's practice in my classroom impertinently condemned my teaching of grammar as 'useless and harmful'. Hence the need of English for Life. I considered that my commitment was not to the headmaster, the inspector, to my own or my colleagues' careers, but to the pupils.
Mary Lynch St Joseph's Nursing Home, 15 Church Street, Lower Edmonton, London N9
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