ABSTRACT
The principle seems a sound one, indeed it provides the basis of much of our work in the School of Education. Educational institutions tend, by their very nature, to be conservative, for it is one of their main and valuable functions to preserve and hand on to a new generation the inheritance of the past. All this has contributed to opening up a new perspective. As educational expansion breaks down the old structure, the ice-cap of old attitudes cracks and thought is flowing into new channels. In 1953, for instance, a small book appeared questioning the technique of constructing group tests, and the concept of ‘intelligence’ they embodied, and pointing to the educational evils which followed from using them in eleven plus selection. The age in which we live is a great deal more mobile than that of a century ago, and the task of educational reform correspondingly more complex.
