Better debate now please

Increasingly, one comes close to despair about the quality of public discussion of education issues. Now we have Mary Warnock, apparently echoing George Walden, declaring that "the worst schools in the country are agreed to be comprehensive schools and some of their feeder primary schools; the best are almost universally agreed to be selective independent schools" (THES, September 20).

From which she passes, erroneously, to the conclusion that "only 7 per cent of the population gets an education generally agreed to be good". Even putting aside the logical error and the difficult problems of measuring "value-added", here we have the quality of education being treated as unidimensional and as a consensual matter. I would be interested to see her defence of those assumptions.

While I agree with some of what she says, fruitful debate surely has to be more effective in its treatment of these issues. It should also avoid denunciations of those who take a different view, such as Warnock's dismissal of the NUT as "a union that is of the old-fashioned militant Left, deeply anti-academic, seen by the outside world, indeed, as deeply stupid". Even aside from the accuracy of the characterisation, since when have philosophers been prepared to dismiss views on the grounds that they are old-fashioned, militant, of the Left, anti-academic, or viewed by the outside world as stupid?

MARTYN HAMMERSLEY School of Education Open University