ABSTRACT
This quotation goes a long way towards helping explain why it was that the teaching profession was to prove so susceptible to external influences from the 1970s onwards. Despite the fact that there were a plethora of new initiatives in classroom practice and pedagogy, many teachers (and Tom Howarth was one of them) remained deeply sceptical about the need for classroom reform and the direction it seemed to be taking. They were prepared to argue publicly for whatever version of ‘traditional’ teaching methods they thought most appropriate. As has been suggested in earlier chapters, these deep and fundamental divisions within the profession about the ways in which children should be taught had existed throughout the post-War period and meant that it was quite impossible for the profession to speak with a single voice. Consequently, at a moment when wider social and economic changes brought what went on in the classrooms under closer public scrutiny, the tried line that the teachers knew best became untenable. The failure to reach any agreed consensus on what constituted best practice meant that the teaching profession was at the mercy of whichever political wind was blowing.
