ABSTRACT
The accolade given primary education by the Plowden Report (pp. 38-9) was swiftly followed by virulent criticisms from those described in the second section of the source book as ‘educational conservatives’ (pp. 95-105). Through a series of ‘Black Papers’, the first of which was published in 1969, they attacked what they saw as ‘permissive education’ in primary schools and in comprehensive secondary schools. These three extracts capture the vehemence and insidiousness of their criticisms.
The first extract provides a simplistic but powerful caricature of what progressivism (or liberal romanticism) implies, that is, ‘the belief that children must find out everything for themselves, must never be told, never be made to do anything, that they are naturally good, must be free of all constraints of authority.’ Progressive education, and with it primary education, are then implicated in ‘the growth of anarchy’ and in ‘the worst features of the pop and drug world’. The direct association of primary education with the ‘roots of anarchy’ is asserted in the second extract, published in 1969 at the climax of student unrest which had included the affair of Hornsey College of Art where the art students had taken control of their own education for several months. The ‘revolution’ in primary education (note the political overtones in the word) is directly linked with student protest and unrest. The third extract has been included partly as an example of the hearsay evidence on which many Black Paper assertions were based. It was written by a secondary school headteacher whose knowledge of primary schools was gleaned from some of his ‘friends in junior schools’. Here again, changes in primary education are held partly responsible for changes in the wider society, such as the growth in the numbers of mentally-disturbed people, the increase in crime and the trend towards greater truancy at the secondary school stage. Although the absurdity of the most extreme Black Paper criticisms could easily be demonstrated, and although the validity of many of their less extreme assertions could be questioned, the Papers did have a considerable influence on political and public opinion. Why was this? Could it be that there was some substance in the disquiet so vociferously expressed by these writers?
