GRAMMAR SCHOOLS

Why is it right to select for ability amongst those who play musical instruments or who sing (as opposed to bawling or shouting), who can run or jump or drive formula one cars or fly fighter aircraft or a thousand and one other things, but fundamentally wrong to select for academic ability, which is also relatively rare.

It all goes back to that demon Karl Marx and those who espoused his multifaceted philosophy which has survived the collapse of the Soviet Union in disguise, and now informs our political establishment regardless of party, and also our educational establishment, to such an extent that it churns out Marxist clones by the thousand every year.

Part of that philosophy is that people are the same the world over and arising from that the vicious jibe ‘racist' levelled at anybody who dares to mention that people vary a lot in some ways more obvious than others. Also part of that philosophy is that people are formed by the society in which they live from which it follows that if you change the environment you change the people.

A large part of public policy since 1945, when the Marxists took over, has been predicated upon spending money in the belief that this would miraculously transform not only the surroundings but also the people who lived in them. Let nobody mention that in half a century neither objective has been wholly reached.

To return to education and to reduce it to its simplest terms, our educationists seem to believe that it is some sort of paint which is applied in schools and that the more expensive the paint, the more expensive the places where it is applied and the more expensive those who apply it, the better the product. As a result a great part of our children, having spent their childhood in school, emerge unable to read write or calculate. I think it safe to say that something is not quite right.

William Shakespeare went as a child in Stratford upon Avon during the 1500's to a grammar school which consisted of a room with desks, a teacher and some books at the dawn of printing.

Their own education having been so neglected our educationists appear not to know that the word itself derives from the latin verb ‘educere' which means to lead or bring forth. At the dawn of history, as it has traditionally been written, the Romans knew that education is about bringing out what is there, not about stuffing in. It follows therefore that if there is little to bring out the results are likely to be disappointing. That is what our educationists will not face or admit.

Training is something else. People can be trained to perform a variety of tasks which includes reading, writing, calculating, plumbing, carpentry etc, and it remains the case that some people will be better than others at specific tasks. The only training methods acceptable are those which produce results. Reading, writing and calculating, both decimal and duodecimal, could be effectively taught certainly between the two world wars. In five years during the second world war I only ever encountered one man who could not write to his wife or read her letters. It is true to say however that the Army Education Corps did run a remedial course.

Grammar Schools developed in imitation of the great public schools to give to the children of an increasingly prosperous middle class the instruction that could take them to university and maybe entrance to one of the learned professions so called. Those who did not proceed so far (the majority) would be literate and numerate - attributes deemed essential to what was considered to be success.

Such schools were frequently founded by men who had made money in some commercial field or other. The school that I attended had been founded by one William Brooke, a tanner, in 1705 and he established a trust to maintain it. In 1930 the site, which included 30 acres of playing fields, was made available by the trust to the West Riding Education Authority which built a new school. From that point on the intake was 50% fee payers who had to pass an entrance exam and 50% pupils funded by the Education Authority, identified through the reviled 11 plus with a retake at 12 from local elementary schools. That was my route into this school.

The whole point of the system was to identify that relatively small percentage of children capable of benefiting from a high class academic education. The Headmaster was a classics scholar and head of the classics department. All of his teachers were university graduates mostly from Oxford, the rest from Cambridge. For the first three years all pupils did the same curriculum, including Latin, and then were separated into an Arts stream, a Science stream and a Practical stream (which for the boys meant woodwork and metalwork and for the girls biology and domestic science). The system may not have been accurate in its selection but there was provision for bringing individuals into the system who were identified late.

That not all are capable is what educationists will not accept and that is why percentage marks for grades have been downgraded to such an extent that some university entrants might not have passed the old 11 plus, some degrees are worthless and all are prejudiced.

The recent announcement by the Conservative Party that it is abandoning its traditional support for selection can be seen as a cynical ploy to acquire relevance in the eyes of uncritical voters. When politicians have relinquished control of policy, as they have, they are in need of some other way to incentivise voters to maintain them in the style to which they have become accustomed. This issue, concerning which they are not in a position to do anything, may be one such. A threat to abolish grammar schools such as the 39 in Kent would land them in hot water locally.

The traditional Marxist view that it is wrong to divide children into sheep and goats at 11 does not have much validity in this materialistic age. The child who failed the 11 plus and went on to become a plumber, an electrician or even a panel beater, would have no need to be envious of his academically gifted friend who did pass and now earns considerably less

It becomes more and more evident day by day that GB PLC is in need of intelligent leadership. An education system that works on the principle that because everybody cannot excel, nobody shall, is the opposite of what is required. Grammar Schools were, and probably still are, stairways to the heights for the talented youngster regardless of background and do we need them!