ABSTRACT
The comparative thinness of the Senior School response to poetry is revealed by the application of the 'standards of popularity'. As in the Secondary Schools, boys aged 12+ seem to show a greater zest for poetry than do boys a year or two older. Classification of poetry is an extremely hazardous and unsatisfactory task. The Secondary School evidence suggests that at 15 + important changes in taste for poetry are beginning to occur; the Senior Schools contain few or no boys aged 15 +, indeed the numbers staying on at school after 14 are small. Unyielding resistance to the appeals of poetry prevails in both sorts of school to much the same degree. Like most established teaching practices it is quite untested: teachers indulge in it largely because it is an established practice, but partly because they have 'beliefs' or 'convictions' about its value.
