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Spens, Norwood and Butler: Following the same hymn sheet
McCulloch’s close analysis of the Spens and Norwood committees and their
respective chairmen detects some important differences between the two men despite
their broad agreement on a three-level structure for secondary education. These
differences range from their derivation - Sir Will Spens from the Board of
Education’s Consultative Committee and Sir Cyril Norwood from the Secondary
Schools Examinations Committee - to their respective views on the purpose of
secondary education. McCulloch describes Spens as having “more materialistic,
individualistic, scientific concerns” and focussing on the “ordinary secondary
school”, whereas Norwood’s stance was "moral, community-spirited” and centred on
the grammar school (McCulloch 1994:122). One might now characterise them as
respectively modem and traditional. Their philosophy of education had a direct effect
on their beliefs about the secondary curriculum. For Spens it should comprise “ ‘the
English subjects’ [comprehension, oral and written expression] together with History,
Geography, English Literature and Scripture”', each subject should have parity within
a balanced curriculum, with an emphasis on their utility for the less able pupils,
Norwood, in contrast, criticised the notion of separate subjects because they resulted
in “extreme specialisation and neglect of common ground” (McCulloch 1994: 123)
For him the objective of secondary education was the training of grammar-school
pupils in clear thinking and the use of English. He set out his opposition to single
subject examinations in a pamphlet:
And there is also the anxiety, the incessant drive which comes from the
knowledge that business houses will use the number of credits more and more
as a test of comparative merit, so that education becomes more and more a
struggle for a five or six credit certificate, is thought of in terms of separate and
unrelated subjects, and is less and less thought of as the training of a complete
person, physically, mentally and morally, for the chances and changes of the
modern life and for the carrying out in an intelligent and responsible manner of