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AN ANGRY PROFESSOR
1269 " further laboratory experience. Not a vertical " system, like the famous Western Reserve experiment, but surely an equally revolutionary and exciting one, and one that will be equally taxing and time-consuming for the staff.
U.S.A.
City Hospital trustees have now announced the pay-scales for their interns and residents.! These range from$5100 for interns to$7000 for fifth-year residents-a rise of$1500 for the interns but of only$400 for the most senior residents. Dr. Philip Caper, president of the hospital’s houseofficers’ association, called this rise, which is to take effect on July 1, unsatisfactory; Dr. Andrew P. Sackett, Boston’s commissioner for health and hospitals, said that it will add $1 to the daily room-charge. The Greater Boston Hospital Council is still deliberating about pay-scales at the other teaching hospitals. Boston
new
Occasional Book AN ANGRY PROFESSOR "
The
of Britain’s decline is in no doubt; we are not creating enough wealth, and this follows because our industrial and commercial practices are obsolete. Britain is, in fact, out of date. The more I have thought of this the more I have become convinced that the fault lies in our educational system, the most powerful weapon which society has to ensure that its people are equipped with the tools to do their jobs. The conviction has grown that if our educational system has been designed at all (and of course it has not) it must have been designed to eliminate Britain as a world power in the second half of the twentieth century." cause
THIS is the irate note on which Sir George Pickering throws down his challenge. As regius professor of medicine at Oxford he has observed the symptoms; in this slim book2 he describes the origin of the educational ills he has identified and prescribes a remedy. The result is a brave if superficial book, written in a succession of slogans, most of which are liberal and uplifting but some of which are more commonplace and less penetrating than Sir George assumes. The pedants and academics in the older universities, of whom he has little good to say, will find no difficulty in tearing it to pieces. Yet it is a good book, perhaps an important book, because it states, forcefully and with passion, some home-truths about English education which are automatically disregarded if they come from anyone who, unlike Sir George, can be labelled as an " educationist "-that last insult in academic circles. Sir George circles his patient cautiously, more like a beast of prey than a physician. He begins by reviewing theories of learning, views of the function and purpose of education, and the main agencies, formal and informal, by which it is carried out. He picks up current concern with the sociological background to education, and in a brief chapter distinguishes between pedantry and learning and the failure of formal education to foster creativity. By examples from art, music, and science he shows how often innovators have worked outside the universities and how, like Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln, their education has often been rudimentary or
painful.
He contrasts the educational needs of today and tomorrow with what is actually available and discusses the patterns of thought in higher education which determine what will be offered. In one of those desperate generalisations which people who write about education and the national life always feel obliged to utter, he narrows his discussion to the education of clever children and in particular those who go to universities. " The main hopes of a country like Britain must be centred on its clever children ". The trouble is, of course, that our 1. See Lancet, June 3, 1967, p. 1222 2. Challenge to Education. By Sir GEORGE PICKERING. London: Watts. 1967. Pp. 167. 15s.
methods of educating clever children depend on identifying them early in life and setting them on fixed tramlines leading to the universities. We must order primary and secondary education in such a way as to bring forward as many children as may be to the point when motivation and personal drive make possible achievement which a cursory examination of i.Q.s would suggest is unthinkable. The main obstacle to thiswhich also prevents the liberation of the clever children from their present strait-jacket-is the tradition of early specialisation which dominates the English grammar and public schools, and which the more successful comprehensive schools are embracing as fast as they can. With this criticism Sir George agrees. " I would have little hesitation in attributing the over-specialisation in schools to the demands made upon them, particularly by the universities. I became aware of this when I was secretary of the Royal College of Physicians’ Committee on Medical Education. Schoolmasters told us that they too wished to give their pupils a broad general education, but the pupil’s chances of entering a university depended ... on the absolute number of marks obtained in the higher school certificate, and so they were pressed by boys and parents to concentrate entirely on the three subjects on which the boy’s future depended. So long as there is competition for places, and so long as that competition is decided by A levels or competitive examination in subjects confined to the faculty to be entered, the schools are forced into premature specialisation. A large part of the blame ... lies with the universities. But not entirely. Like other folk, academics are creatures of habit; schoolmasters have become accustomed to the present system and not all of them press for "
change." The last sentence is a massive understatement: the complacency of the schools-the sheer lack of professional curiosity in sixth-form teachers who have become mere craftsmen whose whole loyalty is directed towards single specialised subjects instead of the general development of their pupils-is one of the more depressing aspects of the educational scene, and suggests that, however much the curriculum may change, reeducation of the teachers will be the biggest task. Perhaps the best part of the book traces how the universities have set the pattern by critical decisions taken in the last century-decisions which stem from the nature of academic freedom in this country. The right to free inquiry and the untrammelled pursuit of truth are of fundamental importance, but, as Sir George makes clear, academic freedom can also mean the opportunity to arrange higher education in the manner most convenient to the dons, rather than in the best interests of the nation or the students. At the end of the 19th century the fateful decision was taken to develop specialised first degrees rather than build up large specialist graduate schools as the Americans have done. The corollary to the specialised first degree has been the specialised sixth form and the whole panoply of school examinations which force back the age at which the academic courses leading to university entrance have to be started. This artificially erected obstacle course eliminates borderline students at every stage from the beginning of the junior school at the age of seven onwards. It is a method which achieves high standards in a limited number of subjects, but it ensures that social and intellectual selection combine to limit the number of university candidates. Sir George is a revolutionary, and he wants the whole structure of secondary and higher education to be reconsidered. But he has only conventional ideas of how this should be donea Royal Commission composed of academics and laymen in equal numbers to lay down new guide-lines and a new pattern. Even if the Prime Minister could be persuaded, present attitudes and present shortages would probably ensure that pressures would outlast the ordinances of Sir George’s wise men. English education, which shares decision-making among innumerable people and institutions, does not take kindly to Napoleonic gestures of reform, however well intentioned. Better perhaps to build on changes already taking place. The most hopeful thing is that there is more movement, more readiness for spontaneous change, in English secondary and higher education today than at any time for a century. EDUCATIONIST.
U.S.A.
City Hospital trustees have now announced the pay-scales for their interns and residents.! These range from$5100 for interns to$7000 for fifth-year residents-a rise of$1500 for the interns but of only$400 for the most senior residents. Dr. Philip Caper, president of the hospital’s houseofficers’ association, called this rise, which is to take effect on July 1, unsatisfactory; Dr. Andrew P. Sackett, Boston’s commissioner for health and hospitals, said that it will add $1 to the daily room-charge. The Greater Boston Hospital Council is still deliberating about pay-scales at the other teaching hospitals. Boston
new
Occasional Book AN ANGRY PROFESSOR "
The
of Britain’s decline is in no doubt; we are not creating enough wealth, and this follows because our industrial and commercial practices are obsolete. Britain is, in fact, out of date. The more I have thought of this the more I have become convinced that the fault lies in our educational system, the most powerful weapon which society has to ensure that its people are equipped with the tools to do their jobs. The conviction has grown that if our educational system has been designed at all (and of course it has not) it must have been designed to eliminate Britain as a world power in the second half of the twentieth century." cause
THIS is the irate note on which Sir George Pickering throws down his challenge. As regius professor of medicine at Oxford he has observed the symptoms; in this slim book2 he describes the origin of the educational ills he has identified and prescribes a remedy. The result is a brave if superficial book, written in a succession of slogans, most of which are liberal and uplifting but some of which are more commonplace and less penetrating than Sir George assumes. The pedants and academics in the older universities, of whom he has little good to say, will find no difficulty in tearing it to pieces. Yet it is a good book, perhaps an important book, because it states, forcefully and with passion, some home-truths about English education which are automatically disregarded if they come from anyone who, unlike Sir George, can be labelled as an " educationist "-that last insult in academic circles. Sir George circles his patient cautiously, more like a beast of prey than a physician. He begins by reviewing theories of learning, views of the function and purpose of education, and the main agencies, formal and informal, by which it is carried out. He picks up current concern with the sociological background to education, and in a brief chapter distinguishes between pedantry and learning and the failure of formal education to foster creativity. By examples from art, music, and science he shows how often innovators have worked outside the universities and how, like Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln, their education has often been rudimentary or
painful.
He contrasts the educational needs of today and tomorrow with what is actually available and discusses the patterns of thought in higher education which determine what will be offered. In one of those desperate generalisations which people who write about education and the national life always feel obliged to utter, he narrows his discussion to the education of clever children and in particular those who go to universities. " The main hopes of a country like Britain must be centred on its clever children ". The trouble is, of course, that our 1. See Lancet, June 3, 1967, p. 1222 2. Challenge to Education. By Sir GEORGE PICKERING. London: Watts. 1967. Pp. 167. 15s.
methods of educating clever children depend on identifying them early in life and setting them on fixed tramlines leading to the universities. We must order primary and secondary education in such a way as to bring forward as many children as may be to the point when motivation and personal drive make possible achievement which a cursory examination of i.Q.s would suggest is unthinkable. The main obstacle to thiswhich also prevents the liberation of the clever children from their present strait-jacket-is the tradition of early specialisation which dominates the English grammar and public schools, and which the more successful comprehensive schools are embracing as fast as they can. With this criticism Sir George agrees. " I would have little hesitation in attributing the over-specialisation in schools to the demands made upon them, particularly by the universities. I became aware of this when I was secretary of the Royal College of Physicians’ Committee on Medical Education. Schoolmasters told us that they too wished to give their pupils a broad general education, but the pupil’s chances of entering a university depended ... on the absolute number of marks obtained in the higher school certificate, and so they were pressed by boys and parents to concentrate entirely on the three subjects on which the boy’s future depended. So long as there is competition for places, and so long as that competition is decided by A levels or competitive examination in subjects confined to the faculty to be entered, the schools are forced into premature specialisation. A large part of the blame ... lies with the universities. But not entirely. Like other folk, academics are creatures of habit; schoolmasters have become accustomed to the present system and not all of them press for "
change." The last sentence is a massive understatement: the complacency of the schools-the sheer lack of professional curiosity in sixth-form teachers who have become mere craftsmen whose whole loyalty is directed towards single specialised subjects instead of the general development of their pupils-is one of the more depressing aspects of the educational scene, and suggests that, however much the curriculum may change, reeducation of the teachers will be the biggest task. Perhaps the best part of the book traces how the universities have set the pattern by critical decisions taken in the last century-decisions which stem from the nature of academic freedom in this country. The right to free inquiry and the untrammelled pursuit of truth are of fundamental importance, but, as Sir George makes clear, academic freedom can also mean the opportunity to arrange higher education in the manner most convenient to the dons, rather than in the best interests of the nation or the students. At the end of the 19th century the fateful decision was taken to develop specialised first degrees rather than build up large specialist graduate schools as the Americans have done. The corollary to the specialised first degree has been the specialised sixth form and the whole panoply of school examinations which force back the age at which the academic courses leading to university entrance have to be started. This artificially erected obstacle course eliminates borderline students at every stage from the beginning of the junior school at the age of seven onwards. It is a method which achieves high standards in a limited number of subjects, but it ensures that social and intellectual selection combine to limit the number of university candidates. Sir George is a revolutionary, and he wants the whole structure of secondary and higher education to be reconsidered. But he has only conventional ideas of how this should be donea Royal Commission composed of academics and laymen in equal numbers to lay down new guide-lines and a new pattern. Even if the Prime Minister could be persuaded, present attitudes and present shortages would probably ensure that pressures would outlast the ordinances of Sir George’s wise men. English education, which shares decision-making among innumerable people and institutions, does not take kindly to Napoleonic gestures of reform, however well intentioned. Better perhaps to build on changes already taking place. The most hopeful thing is that there is more movement, more readiness for spontaneous change, in English secondary and higher education today than at any time for a century. EDUCATIONIST.