Letter: Lecturer can do better in defending education than regurgitating discredited research projects

They send me to back catalogues to seek out the research citations he offers to support his arguments and to the dictionary to define the adjectives with which he authoritatively describes the present school curriculum.

On the occasion of his most recently reported pronunciations (​Expert hopes Givan will deliver quality, June 15) he referred to a study, Follow Through (Project), extending between 1968 until 1977, which was intended to assess educational achievement in USA elementary schools.

I learned - as will anyone who invests a few minutes of research time - that the conclusions of the study , Follow Through (Project), were widely and effectively challenged.

And - dare I remind him - there have been many, many global, national and local studies into educational achievement and curricular models in the intervening five decades to which he could have referred which would not have confirmed him in his prejudices.

As for ‘tinpot’, his modifier for the present curricula in Northern Ireland schools, I am afraid that the adjective did nothing for me.

There is no doubt that Dr Kitchen finds the curriculum (sic) of our schools inadequate in some ways but ‘tinpot’ throws no light on how or why. It is defined in the OED as, “(of a country of a leader) having or showing poor leadership or organisation”.

In the great scheme of things, these things might not matter. Dr Kitchen is entitled to his views and I acknowledge that his occasional lapses into meaningless cliche can ornament dull prose.

But Dr Kitchen is a lecturer in Stranmillis College whose job it is to prepare young people for the teaching profession. He surely must do better than regurgitate discredited research projects in a prose style which would dismay any grammar school English teacher.

J N Morton, former school principal