Education: From Boyle to Baker

  • Adrian Wooldridge
Chapter

Abstract

In 1963 no right-thinking politician or pundit would have dissented from this judgement: Noel Annan was doing little more than expressing a commonplace thought with uncommon eloquence. The British establishment (political as well as cerebral) subscribed to a progressive consensus which had been invented between the wars (mainly by R. H. Tawney) and revised in the 1950s (notably by Tony Crosland). It wanted to abolish the 11-plus, to expand higher education, and to liberalise teaching; and it regarded education not only as a good in itself but also as a powerful instrument of social reform and public enlightenment.

Keywords

Progressive Education Grammar School British Child Black Paper Conservative Party 
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Notes and References

  1. 1.
    Noel Annan, The Guardian (19 February 1963).Google Scholar
  2. 2.
    The literature based on these assumptions is immense. For a representative sample see Harold Silver (ed.), Equal Opportunity in Education (London, 1973): 108–259.Google Scholar
  3. 6.
    Michael Sanderson, Educational Opportunity and Social Change in England (London, 1987): 122–7.Google Scholar
  4. 8.
    James S. Coleman, Equality of Educational Opportunity (New York, 1966).Google Scholar
  5. Frederick Mosteller and Daniel P. Moynihan, On Equality of Educational Opportunity (New York, 1972).Google Scholar
  6. 9.
    V. G. Cicirelli, ‘The Impact of Head Start on Children’s Cognitive and Affective Development’, Westinghouse Learning Corporation (Washington DC, 1969) (the Westinghouse Report).Google Scholar
  7. 10.
    Christopher Jencks (and Marshall Smith, Henry Acland, Mary Jo Bane, David Cohen, Herbert Gintis, Barbara Heyns, Stephen Michelson), Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effect of Family on Schooling in America (New York, 1972).Google Scholar
  8. 12.
    Julian Le Grand, The Strategy of Equality: Redistribution and the Social Services (London, 1982).Google Scholar
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  10. 13.
    Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980 (New York, 1984).Google Scholar
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  12. 14.
    C. B. Cox and A. E. Dyson, ‘Introduction’, in Cox and Dyson (eds), The Black Papers on Education (London, 1971): 9.Google Scholar
  13. 16.
    C. B. Cox and Rhodes Boyson, ‘Background’ Black Paper 1977 (London, 1977): 13.Google Scholar
  14. 17.
    A. E. Dyson, ‘Culture and Anarchy. 1869–1969’, The Critical Quarterly (1969).Google Scholar
  15. 18.
    Amis, ‘Pernicious Participation’, The Black Papers on Education (1971): 172.Google Scholar
  16. 30.
    Terry Ellis, Jackie McWhirter, Dorothy McDolgan and Brian Haddow, William Tyndale; The Teacher’s Story (1976).Google Scholar
  17. 31.
    Robin Auld QC, William Tyndale Junior and Infants Schools Public Inquiry (July 1976): 274, para. 838.Google Scholar
  18. 34.
    Neville Bennett, Teaching Styles and Pupil Progress (London, 1976).Google Scholar
  19. 36.
    Arthur R. Jensen, ‘How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement’, Harvard Educational Review, 39 (1969): 2–3.Google Scholar
  20. 40.
    Richard Herrnstein, ‘I.Q.,’, The Atlantic, 228 (1971): 56, 58.Google Scholar
  21. 42.
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  22. 44.
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  23. 46.
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  24. 47.
    See, for example, M. Hunt, ‘The intelligent man’s guide to intelligence’, Playboy, 18 (February 1971): 94–6, 106, 191–4.Google Scholar
  25. 48.
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  26. 49.
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  27. 50.
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  28. 51.
    James S. Coleman, The Adolescent Society: The Social Life of the Teenager and its Impact on Education (New York, 1961): 318.Google Scholar
  29. 52.
    Quoted in Ken Jones, Right Turn: The Conservative Revolution in Education (London, 1989): 22.Google Scholar
  30. 53.
    For an amusing account of progressive education run wild see Jonathan Miller, ‘Led Astray’, in Brian Inglis (ed.), John Bull’s Schooldays (London, 1961): 101–4.Google Scholar
  31. 59.
    Quoted in Peter Hennessy, Whitehall (London, 1989): 425.Google Scholar
  32. 60.
    Robert Jackson, ‘The Higher Education Funding Debate: Some Conclusions Drawn’, paper delivered to a Centre for Policy Studies Conference (9 May 1989): 10.Google Scholar
  33. 61.
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Copyright information

© Adrian Wooldridge 1990

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  • Adrian Wooldridge

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