ABSTRACT
‘The pool of ability’, as the notion is usually invoked, is not a fact, but a point of view. It is important to be clear about this. There is no Iron Law of the national intellect imposing an upper limit on what can be done by education. What only the outstanding could do yesterday, the great many can do today (e.g. read, write, multiply); so that although the gap between the outstanding and the average does not widen, the educational threshold of mediocrity is continually rising. Moreover, the challenge produces the response, and the response itself is self-consolidating. (There is a nice elaboration of this pedagogical platitude, with reference to the teaching of mathematics, in volume II of the Crowther Report, p. 206.)
