Education for All Children - What We Can Learn From England #264890

Three years ago in 1959, the Committee on Appropriations asked Admiral Rickover to talk on Russian education which he had been studying for some time. This was just after he returned from his visit to Russia as a member of Vice President Nixon's party. The Report on Russia containing his testimony evoked a great deal of public interest and response. We had more requests for these hearings than for any hearings in the history of the committee. It was one of the six best sellers. It evoked both praise and criticism.<br><br>We have again asked Admiral Rickover to come before this committee to give us his ideas, this time on English education. He has immersed himself in this subject because he believes some of the procedures, practices, and devices the English have developed might prove of help to us. Like ourselves, the English want to keep education decentralized. They, too, do not want a centralized, government-controlled school system. In fact, the British Ministry of Education establishes no school, hires no teacher, prescribes no curriculum, awards no degree. Nevertheless, the English have been able to maintain uniform national scholastic standards in their decentrally managed state education system. This, to the admiral, is their great achievement and he feels that the procedures through which they accomplish this might be acceptable to this country.<br><br>He makes a strong case for his belief that we can learn from the English educational experience. He bolsters it by reminding us that we have in the past adopted and adapted much from England and found it good. Our system of justice, our common law, our parliamentary procedure, the safeguards with which we surround the individual to protect him against arbitrary authority - these and many other basic features of our way of life are not unlike basic features of the English way of life. There are enough similarities in English and American political and cultural institutions to give some relevance to the English system of education.<br><br>The Admiral brings out the rather striking parallelisms between England's educational problems a century ago and ours today. Her educational facilities at that time were neither adequate to the needs of her rapidly industrializing society nor competitive with education in countries that challenged England's military and political position. Like ourselves, England moves slowly, awaiting the formation of public consensus before radically changing established institutions; as with us today, her competitors were authoritarian countries that could order educational reform by government fiat and thus move ahead much faster. The English procrastinated and we are doing likewise. The admiral argues that we can profit as much by the mistakes England made a century ago as we can profit by the successful way in which she manages public education today.<br><br>He shows in detail how the English establish and maintain national standards. He puts the system before us so that we can observe how it works.