Education: Who Said Progress?

It was a tough week for those who believe that every day, in every way, things are getting better & better.

¶ People (at least in Britain) are becoming less intelligent, reported London Psychologist Sir Cyril Burt. It is an old story, said Sir Cyril, that the intelligent well-to-do have fewer children than the poor. The real hitch: "Among the far more (numerous working classes it is still the most intelligent families who contribute fewest to the next generation."

At the present rate, he warned, "in a little over 50 years the number of pupils of 'scholarship' ability [will] be halved and the number of feeble-minded almost double, while the general average [will drop] by about five I.Q. points."

¶ People (at least in the U.S.) are getting less well-educated, reported Principal George H. Henry of a Dover, Del. high school in the January Ladies' Home Journal.

Wrote Henry: "Highschool education in America is required to handle throngs of pupils for no other reason than to keep them from roaming the streets. . . . The atmosphere is tentative, hurried, crowded and decidedly anti-intellectual."

More Play, Less Reading. "By stuffing within school walls three times as many things for pupils 'to do' we do not necessarily enrich the life of the pupil three times. . . . The unfortunate outcome of this circus type of school is that pupils think of study as inconsequential to the educational process. . . .

"About a third of the high-school population is not at home with print, and is unable to get the meaning from reasonably difficult books. . . . Youth feeds on the violence of the comics; idolizes speed, memorizes swing verses almost by osmosis, yet cannot quote a line of decent poetry. . . ."