All Must Have Prizes

This trenchant 1996 polemic against the modern style of education in Britain is one of the most one-sided books I have ever read. But that does not mean it can be ignored. Obviously the detailed examples relate to Britain and not to other countries such as the USA. However, fashions in ideas, and teaching methods, can and do cross the Atlantic in both directions and the arguments debated in the book are likely to be relevant in many parts of the world. I have to start this review with a major qualification: neither the school where I am about to conclude 20 years as a governor, nor the school which my own children currently attend, bear much resemblance to the picture painted in this book. However, I did see hints of this picture in the school where I was previously a governor. More to the point, I have met far too many parents, teachers, and employers who do recognise the stories in this book as a description of what has been inflicted on their children, pupils, or new employees, to lightly dismiss the arguments presented by Melanie Phillips as a description of what went wrong in the late 20th century in too many British schools. From the newpaper articles by the author and her close intellectual ally, former head of the schools inspectorate Phillip Woodhead, I am sure she would argue that these problems have not been solved - and sadly she probably has a point. The author would now be considered on matters of education to be a conservative with a small c - this means someone of traditional views, who does not necessarily also support the Conservative party, with a large C. A conservative is sometimes described as "A liberal who has been mugged by reality". Melanie Phillips started out as a "liberal" (e.g. left wing) journalist on the Guardian, which is the main left-liberal newspaper in Britain, and back then she supported all the ideas which were fashionable for "progressives" at the time. On one or two issues she still does, witness the sideswipes at Mrs Thatcher which occasionally occur in the book. However, Melanie Phillips changed her position from arch-liberal to arch conservative when she observed at first hand how liberal and progressive teaching methods were failing children. The book is full of examples. I cannot accept that this book is a full and fair picture of every school in Britain at the time it was written or subsequently. It does not describe the schools I know best. But the book does score a very large number of direct hits on things which have gone wrong with some schools and makes convincing arguments about how complete nonsense from some parts of the British educational establishment have made matters worse. And part of the reason the good schools of which I have personal experience have been successful and are not like the schools described in "All must have prizes" is that they have had excellent, confident, hands-on headmasters and headmistresses who know when to ignore rubbish from the national education mi

Shouldn't one actually say why, one thinks someone's book is "rubbish", rather than just "expressing one's sentiments. I have yet to read Melanie Phillips book but I did hear her interviewed on radio and she was rational, reasoned and fairminded in her criticisms of the abandonment of standards in contemporary schooling. I'd give Phillips and open minded read.

Melanie Phillips is an eloquent writer, one of the best essayists in Anglosphere journalism. In the U.K. she is truly the voice of one crying in the wilderness. She documents the bizarre dissolution of the British education system, to the point of utter collapse. Ms. Phillips explains that the teaching of English language skills has been virtually derailed in the U.K. Firstly, the idea that students should be required to actually learn the internal rules of a language has been absurdly politicized. The teaching of grammatical rules has been judged to be some kind of oppressive act against the child. Secondly, the educational establishment has rejected the genius of Western phonics. English words are composed of letters which stand for sounds. If you know the sounds that each letter stands for you can pronounce and use the word. Granted there are many exceptions to the general rules connecting sounds to letters, but, in the main, this principle controls. This is obvious but there are language systems that do not use this approach. Chinese, for instance, uses pictograms. Chinese children have to learn by sheer force of memory thousands of pictograms. Chinese typewriters are a sight to behold. Ms. Phillips documents the amazing fact that much of the English educational establishment has rejected teaching children the "code" whereby letters are associated with articulated sounds, in favor, of treating each word as an entity which is recognized and learned as a whole. This approach, of course, has the effect of treating English as if it was composed of pictograms; words are just groups of symbols which must be memorized by sight, instead of figured out using the rules regarding only 26 symbols. This, of course, wastes the advantage of a phonics based language system. In the end, Ms. Phillips documents that education, and the transmission of knowledge from one generation to another, was placed in the hands of people who incredibly believed that: a) the very act of actively teaching a child was an oppressive political act which harmed the child and b) there was no need to preserve and transmit an accumulated cultural heritage from one generation to another and c) that the historical English culture was not truly worthy of passing on to another generation, including the great thinkers, poets, writers and philosophers of English history. In short, education was placed in the hand of people who considered the act of teaching to be oppressive and the transmission of English culture to be undesirable. Not too surprisingly, education in public schools has descended into farce. Americans will recognize the same forces at work in many areas of education today. I can only hope that this book finds a wider audience in America, as its lessons are truly important for the health of society. I encourage everyone to read Ms. Phillips for themselves and I think they will agree that her voice needs to be heard and that she has marshalled a powerful ar

This book should be required reading for every teacher (whether at school or college) and politican in the country. It should also be read by anyone who is interested in, worried by, or cares for, our society. It should most of all be read by parents. The evidence the author presents is truly shocking in places. She explains the background to the current educational mess concisely and wisely. For anyone who doubts the value of this book, I would say, just watch the constant dumbing down that goes hand in hand with our failed education system. Once you've read it, you'll understand why! I cannot recommend this book highly enough.