Mr Edward Short, deputy leader of the Opposition and former Secretary for Education, speaking to student teachers at Caerleon College of Education in Monmouthshire, declared that “the old, externally imposed discipline made children into hypocrites and liars because, when the disciplinarian was absent, whether he was parent, teacher or policeman, there was no discipline”. While accepting that there must be rules, he argued that they should be kept down to an irreducible minimum and that the gain from this was well worth a little marginal chaos. Mr Short also criticised the idea that the adult knows what subjects are best for the child. “The principal determinants of what a child truly learns,” he said, “are his own interests and his own experience.”
One does not need to search far to find the reason for the expression of such extreme views. Modern educational theorists, in common with innovators in other spheres, completely overlook the fact of man’s fall in Adam. The theories they propound, consequently, are hopelessly out of touch with reality. May the Universities and Schools of Britain, suffering sufficiently already through the application of such theories, be spared a further infusion of modern educational theories lest complete chaos be the final result.