Comprehensive School, The Story of Woodberry Down

[p022] Comprehensive School: the story of Woodberry Down, H. R. Chetwynd. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 18s. My first teaching job was in a secondary modern school in a Yorkshire mining town. The only only thing modern about it was the name. A dilapidated building, peeling green and brown paint, tattered and out-of-date text books, and a weary staff struggling with bored and rebel- lious adolescerits. No .wonder. the ambition. of pupil and teacher alike was to get away from the place as soon as possible. Some years later, I taught in a comprehensive school, such as Miss Chetwynd describes in this book. Gymnasia, laboratories, workrooms, sound-proof music rooms, well-lit classrooms, theatres, libraries, display - cabinets, record players, sports equip- ment—nothing was missing. The two schools belong to different worlds, not only in appearance and equipment, but in the ideas associated with them. The ‘Sec. Mod.’ is the place for those who are destined to become miners, dockers, building workers, etc—that.is, the ‘less able’ children (the phrase has all the patronising overtones of ‘the deserving poor’ and ‘ the labouring classes’). The ‘brighter’ children go to grammar schools :and enter ‘the professions’, get white-collar jobs, etc. Incidentally, the child of a professional man has a far greater chance of getting into a grammar school than a working-class child. The ‘theoretical justification’ for this sorting-out process is that human beings are born with something known as an ‘Intelligence Quotient’. Nobody knows what this undefined ‘1.Q.’ is supposed to be, but we are told that it is permanent and unchanging. You are born either very bright, bright, average or dull—and there’s nothing can be done about it. The eleven-plus sorts the upper levels out and gives them an ‘academic’ education. The remainder are supposed to be more suited to a ‘ practical’ education (whatever that is) and are consigned to the ‘Sec. Mod.’ The comprehensive school is a challenge to this utterly reactionary, unscientific and conservative view. . and narrow - minded, LABOUR REVIEW —Spring, 1961 Miss Chetwynd says her aims are: to ensure that children will not be labelled according to the eleven-plus exam; to safeguard the right of transfer to slower or faster teaching groups as the need arises; to provide a sound, basic education in as many subjects as possible across the whole ability range; to give every child the opportunity of discovering skill in craft, technical ability and creative or artistic talents; and, over all, ‘to demonstrate that education is a continuative process preparing our pupils not only to earn a living but to live’. This is a signpost to the future. But it is not attainable in the here and now. Thus, Miss Chetwynd notes with regret the youngsters only a few years . over school-leaving age, who wander aimlessly about the streets near billiard saloons and pin-table arcades. And she wonders what she can do when youth’s ‘natural and desirable thirst for adventure is partly satisfied by the acquisition of a flick-knife or ‘some knuckle-dusters . Or when, if an unlucky fight breaks out, ‘a fundamentally decent boy finds him- self in the courts, in prison. or on the scaffold itself’. - _ There is nothing she can do—qua headmistress. building comprehensive schools. . Capitalist society hems in, frustrates and tortures its youth—and then imprisons and hangs to keep them in line. A system based on profit and maintained by violence, it creates ‘delinquent youth’ at the one extreme self - satisfied Philistines at the other. But capita- lism has also created the working . class. And the revolutionary move- ment is now growing which will lead that class to smash capitalism and all the evils associated with it. Then we can really build schools. And the work of the schools will be fruitful. We will be able to educate our children to live. G.G. First Half