* FEBRUARY 23 1929

A paper of question on the subject of their own reading was submitted to 200 boys of a provincial grammar school. It was suggested by the frequent allegation that youthful delinquents are led astray by crime stories or crime films. Novels which are concerned with crime seem to have little effect on boys. Though the taste for reading about crime seems to grow, schoolboys are certainly not more lawless than they used to be; on the contrary they are better behaved and more orderly. Perhaps reading of this kind is an outlet for disorderly tendencies. One is tempted to say that reading of “bloods” should be encouraged. There is no evidence to show that they are harmful.

50 years ago

* FEBRUARY 26 1954

Illiteracy has jostled the intelligence test from the headlines.

There is a curious link between the two. Illiteracy marks the failure of the teacher. The intelligence test has doughty repercussions on his work.

This claimed notice two years ago, when it came out that practice and coaching could alter the scores in intelligence tests. It was then admitted, what many had privately suspected, that coaching in these tests went on in some primary schools.

The tradition of the grammar school scholarship dies hard in the primary school as well as outside it. The unhappy result of all this is that the intelligence test has been much discredited.

25 years ago

An industrial dispute kept the TES out of production from November 30, 1978 to November 16, 1979.