THE PETERITE Vol. LXIII
MAY, 1972
EDITORIAL
No. 386
Tok, ■„/
'Who hath believed our report?' How often must Isaiah's famous question have brought a flicker of discreet irreverence to the face of the schoolmaster as he savours the laconic remark he is devising to tell a parent that his boy is 'working well within his very narrow limits', or that there is some possibility that he 'might do well if prepared to concentrate'. The boy is usually unaffected by Isaiah; he will probably be thinking of something else; but the challenging question has been known to provide the opening to the delicate negotiations between father and son that sometimes follow the arrival of the report at home. Reports. What a lot of reporting there is in the ponderous process of education: reported to the housemaster for smoking; report in, report out; report for a run. Each year headmasters deliver long reports on the general progress of their schools, reports that are laced with little local anecdotes that bring slightly nervous relief to a tense occasion. To the deep-browed educationist a Report has a capital letter, for it means one of the fearsome books that result from meetings of very learned people under a chairman whose name will forever be given to the Report. Each carries the authority of the Crown; each finds its way to the educationist's shelf where it usually remains. The names are frequently mentioned long afterwards, but few people can remember exactly what they stand for. There was a Robbins and a Newsom, and Plowden certainly rings a bell. Aspiring teachers find it advisable to know about the Reports, and even to be able to distinguish between them. Education committees interviewing for headships will always nod wisely when a candidate says 'of course, we were doing this even in the days before Newsom'. The nod should be a warning; some of the committee will be wondering what on earth it was that Newsom reported about, but most will be hoping that the next applicant will know a bit less than this one. Of course everyone should know about Newsom, Robbins and Plowden. But the schoolboy doesn't. He still goes 'unwillingly to school', and is still largely concerned with explaining why the prep he hasn't done was mistaken for the other one he didn't do, and so he couldn't really do either. And when, a few years later, he returns with both feet well on the ladder, he still does not know about Newsom, Robbins and Plowden; and he is doing very well in his ignorance, perhaps partly because most masters did not accept his explanations about his preps. What he had learnt was not to get away with it too often, and to have a go at what he was told to do, probably admitting that he preferred to be told rather than be asked to make too many choices.
