The fundamentals of education

The headteacher of one of our local private schools, in his end of academic year 2013-14 speech to pupils and parents, made the following statement (as printed, including the syntactical error, on the school’s website) as evidence for the superiority of his school and other private schools: “Richard Walden the chairman of the Independent Schools Association said at conference recently that state schools are creating amoral children because they spend more time on academic studies than learning right from wrong he suggested that the pressure to get excellent results is distracting teachers from imparting good values to pupils. In contrast he argued that private schools turn out young people with emotional intelligence and moral understanding. He added that privately educated pupils do well not because they are from elitist or privileged backgrounds but because they have received ‘a value-rich education provided with love. Oh how true this is...”