Ten years ago, an American professor wrote 'The Closing of the American Mind: How higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today's students' (Alan Bloom, Simon and Schuster, 1987).
This was a devastating indictment of the American education system. Bloom demonstrated the catastrophic consequences of abandoning belief in 'true truth' or absolute values. But what about the situation in Britain? What philosophical assumptions lie behind our education system? Progressive educational philosophy was a reaction against 'repressive' traditional teaching techniques, such as rote-learning, whole class teaching, and streaming. The 'child-centred' approach advocated methods taking account of individual needs.
For some time there has been a reaction against progressive practice, and calls for a return to more traditional methods which have intensified with the advent of a new government. But such calls sometimes founder on the simple reality that many teachers are themselves the products of the progressive classrooms of the 1960s and 70s and on a dogmatic refusal to countenance selective schooling or streaming. The political and philosophical insistence on 'equality' has meant in practice the 'dumbing down' of educational standards.
