School of the Future?

Wartime or no, schoolmasters will still get together to talk shop. Last week in London the Incorporated Association of Assistant Masters in Secondary Schools held a meeting. The retiring chairman, homey, 60-year-old Arthur Henry Baker, chemistry master of Fitzmaurice Grammar School at Bradford-on-Avon, took a long look into the future, reported a horrendous sight:

"The multilateral school* of 1980 will have some 3,000 pupils and there will be umpteen sides and umpteen wings in each. Its buildings will dwarf the countryside for miles around. It will have its own aerodrome and pupils will arrive by communal transport planes and even by private 'jeep' planes from all points of the compass.

"From an eyrie in its central tower the supreme headmaster will be able to tune in by television and telephone to any classroom. A private press will be necessary for him to issue his daily orders to his command.

"A personal visit of the head to a class will be an annual event, accompanied by all the ceremonial of a present-time speech day. A tube railway will be needed to connect its sixth-form rooms with the nearest university. The marvelous efficiency of such a school will shriek to high heaven and yet--right glad am I to think that a beneficent providence has ensured that I shall not be called upon to act as the smallest cog in its gargantuan machinery."

A new academic, vocational and technical combine now under discussion in London.

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