All Must Have Prizes [Paperback]

Melanie Phillips (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 5, 1998

British Education is in a state of meltdown. Throughout the system, from nursery classes to degree courses, the relationship between teacher and pupil has been undermined, and the idea that children should be taught a body of rules at all, whether in maths or grammar, is now taboo in many schools. Systematic instruction has given way to approximations and guesswork. The result is a rising tide of illiteracy. Melanie Phillips' devastating book is the inside story of a social debacle. But the collapse of education is not viewed in isolation. At the heart of the problem lies cultural and moral relativism, the doctrine that no values can be judged to be any better or worse than any other. The primary effect, particularly in the last twenty years, is the collapse of the authority of the institutions. Melanie Phillips sounds a warning and offers a blueprint to restore authority and meaning to society.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Prophetic and provocative, this is likely to become the most discussed work of social criticism since Allan Bloom's THE CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND.' Jonathan Sacks '... [a] seminal book... the issues Phillips discusses are what really matter... it is deeply disturbing that so many educationalists appear unable to accept any evidence which challenges their own complacency and prejudice.' Chris Woodhead, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools, SUNDAY TIMES 'An awesome polemic... If we fudge her questions, we will be courting disaster... The reader is swept along by this passion which is linked to superb writing and a fiercely independent mind.' GUARDIAN 'Essential reading' SPECTATOR '...a book which raises many uncomfortable questions for those of us who care about what is happening in our society.' Ian Wilson, Head Teacher, FABIAN REVIEW 'A brave book... Like the good journalist she is, she uses personal interviews to great effect, but she has also done her homework... as she is right on all the important issues, she is also right to protest as energetically as she does.' Dr Eric Anderson, TLS 'I have finally got round to reading the most terrifying book of the decade and recommend it to every parent, grandparent and teacher who cares about the education of the next generation.' EXPRESS

About the Author

Melanie Phillips has been a columnist for the Guardian and now the Observer and won the prestigious Orwell Prize in 1996 for her journalism. This is her first book.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Warner (February 5, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0751522740
• ISBN-13: 978-0751522747
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,275,484 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deserves Greater Attention in the U.S.A., May 5, 2006

By 

Orianna "never forget" (Midwest USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: All Must Have Prizes (Paperback)

Melanie Phillips is an eloquent writer, one of the best essayists in Anglosphere journalism. In the U.K. she is truly the voice of one crying in the wilderness. She documents the bizarre dissolution of the British education system, to the point of utter collapse.

Ms. Phillips explains that the teaching of English language skills has been virtually derailed in the U.K. Firstly, the idea that students should be required to actually learn the internal rules of a language has been absurdly politicized. The teaching of grammatical rules has been judged to be some kind of oppressive act against the child. Secondly, the educational establishment has rejected the genius of Western phonics. English words are composed of letters which stand for sounds. If you know the sounds that each letter stands for you can pronounce and use the word. Granted there are many exceptions to the general rules connecting sounds to letters, but, in the main, this principle controls. This is obvious but there are language systems that do not use this approach. Chinese, for instance, uses pictograms. Chinese children have to learn by sheer force of memory thousands of pictograms. Chinese typewriters are a sight to behold.

Ms. Phillips documents the amazing fact that much of the English educational establishment has rejected teaching children the "code" whereby letters are associated with articulated sounds, in favor, of treating each word as an entity which is recognized and learned as a whole. This approach, of course, has the effect of treating English as if it was composed of pictograms; words are just groups of symbols which must be memorized by sight, instead of figured out using the rules regarding only 26 symbols. This, of course, wastes the advantage of a phonics based language system.

In the end, Ms. Phillips documents that education, and the transmission of knowledge from one generation to another, was placed in the hands of people who incredibly believed that: a) the very act of actively teaching a child was an oppressive political act which harmed the child and b) there was no need to preserve and transmit an accumulated cultural heritage from one generation to another and c) that the historical English culture was not truly worthy of passing on to another generation, including the great thinkers, poets, writers and philosophers of English history. In short, education was placed in the hand of people who considered the act of teaching to be oppressive and the transmission of English culture to be undesirable. Not too surprisingly, education in public schools has descended into farce.

Americans will recognize the same forces at work in many areas of education today. I can only hope that this book finds a wider audience in America, as its lessons are truly important for the health of society.

I encourage everyone to read Ms. Phillips for themselves and I think they will agree that her voice needs to be heard and that she has marshalled a powerful argument against the insanity that reigns in so many public schools in the U.K. and, of course, here in the U.S. also.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First Prize for All Must Have Prizes, March 6, 2005

By 

WhitePride - See all my reviews

This review is from: ALL MUST HAVE PRIZES (Hardcover)

This book should be required reading for every teacher (whether at school or college) and politican in the country. It should also be read by anyone who is interested in, worried by, or cares for, our society. It should most of all be read by parents. The evidence the author presents is truly shocking in places. She explains the background to the current educational mess concisely and wisely.

For anyone who doubts the value of this book, I would say, just watch the constant dumbing down that goes hand in hand with our failed education system. Once you've read it, you'll understand why!

I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very one-sided but scores a lot of direct hits, April 30, 2007

By 

Marshall Lord (Whitehaven, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: All Must Have Prizes (Paperback)

This trenchant 1996 polemic against the modern style of education in Britain is one of the most one-sided books I have ever read. But that does not mean it can be ignored.

Obviously the detailed examples relate to Britain and not to other countries such as the USA. However, fashions in ideas, and teaching methods, can and do cross the Atlantic in both directions and the arguments debated in the book are likely to be relevant in many parts of the world.

I have to start this review with a major qualification: neither the school where I am about to conclude 20 years as a governor, nor the school which my own children currently attend, bear much resemblance to the picture painted in this book.

However, I did see hints of this picture in the school where I was previously a governor. More to the point, I have met far too many parents, teachers, and employers who do recognise the stories in this book as a description of what has been inflicted on their children, pupils, or new employees, to lightly dismiss the arguments presented by Melanie Phillips as a description of what went wrong in the late 20th century in too many British schools.

From the newpaper articles by the author and her close intellectual ally, former head of the schools inspectorate Phillip Woodhead, I am sure she would argue that these problems have not been solved - and sadly she probably has a point.

The author would now be considered on matters of education to be a conservative with a small c - this means someone of traditional views, who does not necessarily also support the Conservative party, with a large C. A conservative is sometimes described as "A liberal who has been mugged by reality". Melanie Phillips started out as a "liberal" (e.g. left wing) journalist on the Guardian, which is the main left-liberal newspaper in Britain, and back then she supported all the ideas which were fashionable for "progressives" at the time. On one or two issues she still does, witness the sideswipes at Mrs Thatcher which occasionally occur in the book.

However, Melanie Phillips changed her position from arch-liberal to arch conservative when she observed at first hand how liberal and progressive teaching methods were failing children. The book is full of examples.

I cannot accept that this book is a full and fair picture of every school in Britain at the time it was written or subsequently. It does not describe the schools I know best. But the book does score a very large number of direct hits on things which have gone wrong with some schools and makes convincing arguments about how complete nonsense from some parts of the British educational establishment have made matters worse.

And part of the reason the good schools of which I have personal experience have been successful and are not like the schools described in "All must have prizes" is that they have had excellent, confident, hands-on headmasters and headmistresses who know when to ignore rubbish from the national education ministry (DFES) or the local schools department at county hall.

If you want to have an understanding of the issues around education in Britain, you may or may not agree with this book but you ought to read it.