@ Brian: yes, this quotation sums up Harker thinks of Sharp's educational project - as outlined and justified in 'Some Thoughts' - quite neatly. It was re-reading Julia Bishop in Roud that reminded me that this was the overall thrust of that work.

The potential issues Sharp's project raises in my mind are somewhat at a tangent but not wholly irrelevant.

I was once impressed with the idea of a 'spiral curriculum', the idea that whatever level you were teaching your subject at you could teach it with intellectual honesty. Giving kids songs with lyrics largely by Marson and letting them think or teaching them that these were folk songs passed down through the ages strikes me as intellectually dishonest.

Marson seems to have been an interesting character in his own right.