The Devil That Failed. The Ominous Adventure of a Twentieth C... by Maurice Samuel

The book itself has enjoyed pride of place in the bathroom for a month or two now.

Edward Thomas isn’t shown at his best and Andrew Young reminds me more of Pam Ayers without the humour and sits awkwardly next to Yeats. Nonetheless, this happily retired pedagogue no longer has to fret over such things. Unfortunately the exam machine brigade prospered and now occupy many senior positions where their blinkered myopic approach does even more damage to children’s learning. Obviously it is possible to achieve both and I knew a few practitioners who had mastered the art. The debate of whether you teach or coach for examination success is brilliantly developed in Alan Bennett’s The History Boys. Fascinating that the practice returned to English teaching in the early years on the 21st century for the same purpose and exam scripts echoed to lines that were quite obviously three stations beyond the student’s destination. Barely a simile goes by without a tiny “simile” in the margin or a misspelt “onomatopoeia”. It was done in order to pass exams and for no other purpose. This harped back to the time when English teachers explained poems to students and the diligent ones copied the wisdom verbatim (with greater or less comprehension) in tiny pencil writing around the verse. My copy was saved from the skip at a school I taught at in the 90s and has the advantage of being old by then.

Similar to the patriotism that says my country is the best country in the world because I was born in it. (The attitude that had dads and uncles teaching their sons how to double de-clutch in cars that had long had synchromesh gearing.this is how I was taught and because it was the way I was taught it must be right. Published the year before I was born and popular in the various schools I attended as well a still being current for those English teachers in the 80s and 90s who felt that children were better learning what they themselves had learned.

The Devil That Failed. The Ominous Adventure of a Twentieth C... by Maurice Samuel