Monovian Editorial 1966

Editor: O. A. SWAN

Winter 1966

SPEAKING EDITORIALLY
Snobs! This is what the Minister for Education and Science recently implied about the grammar school pupils. This kind of generalisation is exceptionally dangerous to make, as welt as the fact that the word snob has many different meanings to different people. The one general impression that it leaves on most people is one of unpleasantness. It is one of the most important things in life that one must avoid; one can become socially better than someone else, but on no account must one become a snob. The Minister's exact words were "We know that the grammar schools do inculcate into their pupils the moral altitude that encourages snobbery?' Never in my seven years at this school has anyone ever even suggested that as a pupil here I was better than someone who went to a non-grammar school. The suggestion of snobbishness does not come from within the school, but from outside sources. Parents whose children have reached the age of eleven place far too much emphasis on what the neighbours will say when their child goes to a certain school. The selection at this age is to give the form of education that will best suit the particular child. It is not out to make a child feel socially inferior. The only thought that should be in parents' minds when they make the selection, of schools that they would like their child to go to, is what school will give their child the best education. This does not always mean that this will be the school with the best name locally.

On the first day of the new school year the first formers are told, and the rest of the school reminded, that they have in their possession the good name of the school, and that their deeds and actions will reflect upon this good name. This is where the word pride has to take the fore. It is the sense of pride that one has in the school and its academic and sporting achievements that is the important thing. Unfortunately, this sense of pride can be interpreted as snobbery when viewed by an outsider. If a person is not proud of his school, there must be something radically wrong with either the child or the schools, with our school I can say without any shadow of doubt, that the wrong would lie with the child. To summarise what the Head master said on Speech Day, it is not the moral attitudes that encourage snobbery that are inculcated into us, but the attitudes that encourage the condemnation of the cheap, the nasty and the shoddy, whether of morality, courtesy, graciousness, sportsmanship or learning, and those in public lire who accept low standards, or by their silence condone them. I find it very difficult to understand why this sense of pride is changed into one of snobbery. However, in the eyes of certain politicians, snobbery is equated with grammar schools, and thus since snobbery is to be condemned, s~ too are the grammar schools.

At the same time the Minister did not wish to say anything against the academic achievements of the grammar school. Snobbery is what is thought by some people to accompany the good academic records of this type of school, then it must be considered as one of those unfortunate secondary factors, comparable with the fact that radiation is a by-product of an atomic reaction. If as he said, he wishes to extend "the conditions of the grammar schools to the benefit of the many who have been previously denied these privileges." they cannot be considered a bad thing.

As long as the school continues to achieve its high academic record, and attainment in sport, as well at teaching its pupils the highest moral values, the problem of the "side effects" must be considered of little import.

Graham A. Swan