25 years ago

21st February 1997, 12:00am

Share

25 years ago

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/25-years-ago-16
Highland and Island children present special problems to the educational psychologist, Miss Helen Alexander, Inverness-shire’s county psychologist, said. Standard intelligence tests could give misleading results when they depended on concepts and language which might not be familiar to children brought up in Gaelic speaking areas where many objects taken for granted in towns were never found.

There were also problems because pupils took their schoolwork so seriously. Many evidently considered tests, with their element of play, to be a waste of time. But their natural politeness made them anxious to please the visitor with the answer they thought she expected.

* “There is nothing wrong with the process of indoctrination. It is the doctrine that matters.” Brother Kenneth, former headmaster of St Mungo’s Academy, Glasgow, in his booklet “Catholic Schools in Scotland 1872-1972”.

* The Scottish bagpipe is being added to the list of instruments which pupils might offer in the SCE O grade.

* At a meeting in Edinburgh of the Campaign for the Advancement of State Education a suggestion that a special recruitment scheme be established to provide an elite core of mobile teachers was given general approval. In return for longer training and higher pay, they would have to go where they were told, attend in-service courses as instructed and work outside school hours.

* Live music has been subject to power cuts in Edinburgh during the past week or so. Cold though many a concert hall, not to mention cathedral, must have been when Beethoven conducted one of his own symphonies or Palestrina directed one of his masses, we cannot, it seems, stand adverse physical conditions these days. As a result two particularly good SNO programmes in the Usher Hall had to be cut, the oil-warmed Glaswegians being better off in this respect.

TES SCOTLAND, FEBRUARY 25, 1972

Want to keep reading for free?

Register with Tes and you can read two free articles every month plus you'll have access to our range of award-winning newsletters.

Keep reading for just £1 per month

You've reached your limit of free articles this month. Subscribe for £1 per month for three months and get:

  • Unlimited access to all Tes magazine content
  • Exclusive subscriber-only stories
  • Award-winning email newsletters
Recent
Most read
Most shared