The all‐through comprehensive

Abstract

Few educational reforms have owed much to the influence of parents and men in the street. Yet if the country is now curing itself, slowly and painfully, of the lunacy of selection at 11 plus, it is because parents and voters want it to. The only political party which might have opposed it knew that to become the party of the 11 plus was electoral folly. Most of the ‘save our grammar schools’ chaps have become in Cyril Hughes' happy phrase,WAFCEBs — ‘we are for comprehensive education, but …’ If it had not been for parental revulsion, the psychologists, researchers, journalists and socialists would still be bombinating in a void. Bluff commonsense, parental experience and educational theory have all led to the same conclusion — and selective diehards are left with arguments culled from Plato, the 18th century and pure ignorance.

Citation

Burgess, T. (1968), "The all‐through comprehensive", Education + Training, Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 20-23. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb015911