But Peace, who was carrying out that research? It was done by an accademia that was, generally, very strongly leaning towards the Left and it was this Left Wing connection, coupled with the fact that many of the accademics themselves were NUT members, that caused the NUT to support it so strongly.

Unfortunately, the post -war creaping advance of Socialism meant that no one in authority was prepared to stand up and defend the tradional teaching theories and a lot of teachers that tried to found themselves not only without jobs, but very often without the support of their union!

It is not as if there were not warnings that the adoption of these methods was not going to cause trouble. The saga of the ILEA's William Tyndall School showed how adoption of modern methods can lead to educational chaos and anarchy within a school.

And this was only because a couple of strongly minded, left leaning, teachers, strongly committed to modern methods, managed to undermine the authority of not only a weak temporary head, but a local education authority beset by it's own problems.

There is also a lesson on the use of language here. "Modern," "Child Centred," "Progressive," "Liberal," "Forward Looking" are all terms used to describe the approaches that were put forward from the late '50s onwards, which immediately gave the educational progressives the moral high ground and the impression that their opponents were, at the very least, "Old Fashioned" or "Out Dated."

The fact that many of the progressive reforms, particularly in the teaching of reading, have consistantly failed is only now officially being recognised.

The damage our children have suffered will be with us for many years to come.