THE PETERITE Vol. LXI I
JANUARY, 1971
No. 384
EDITORIAL If the trend of some educational thinking should prevail, the rat-race will soon be over, and nearly everyone will have lost. In its place will be the caucus-race, which has a great attraction in that you can join it when you like and stop when you like; but, as the apathetic and idle Dodo announced in the Wonderland caucus-race, when it is over, "everybody has won, and all must have prizes". And poor Alice, like the welfare state, was expected to find exactly equal prizes for all the wretched participants. Could it be that the gentle Oxford mathematician was more discerning than Plato or More or Orwell in penetrating the social problem of the equal society? A society in which all are equal seems to be a right ideal, but, like Utopia, it would be deadly dull; and if everybody is to get a prize then prizes will cease to matter and individuality will be submerged, as we were warned at last summer's Speech Day by the Provost of The Queen's College, Oxford. The idea of prizes for all is tempting, and seemingly the ultimate in social justice. Some might see this being achieved through a fully
comprehensive system of education; but there is a danger that comprehensive education, ideally designed to ensure the 1944 aim of suiting the "age, aptitude and ability" of all at school, could be seen as a means of preventing ability from being rewarded or even developed. Already a new problem is being argued by the experts: "What can be done for gifted children?" There is a National Association for Gifted Children, but it seems that so far research has not been able to determine the likely number of such children; and planning for them must apparently wait on this research, as a common sense answer to the problem would not be contemplated. On the other hand, the claim of the great mass of the less gifted produces such schemes as continuous assessments, which could become far more misleading than the examinations that some would like to see them replace; and if examinations should come to be based on the recent proposals for "A" levels, there would be so many grades as to blur comfortably both failure and excellence. At the same time, the growing popularity of multiple choice examination questions would suit the mind trained on football pools and bingo. And if the paying of fees is thought to give an educational advantage, can parents be allowed to save for
educational books or holidays, or would this be unfair? 1