ABSTRACT
When Edmund Burke, the eighteenth century political thinker remarked that one sure symptom of an ill-conducted state was the propensity of the people to resort to theories, he was not thinking about education, but this cogent observation might well be applied to the situation in which we find ourselves today. Since the last war there has been a greater expansion of education in terms of money and manpower than had ever before been contemplated, and at the moment the cost of education exceeds what is spent on national defence. It would, however, be foolishly complacent to claim that the vast expenditure on schooling of all kinds has significantly improved standards of achievement in what used to be called the basic subjects of the curriculum. Indeed, during the past five years there have been significant murmurs of discontent from a number of quarters about the many school-leavers who cannot spell, write accurately or cipher satisfactorily, while the public at large is beginning to think that a return to more systematic and structured methods of schooling is long overdue.
