About their problems. They try to find answers for their problems together. For example

182 LESS EQUALITY IN EDUCATION, MORE QUALITY
By Dr. Ambrose Flint
Few people nowadays regard education as a privilege. They think that education is a special right for those who get it. Almost everyone recognises that it is important for every child to have the opportunity to learn. But in my opinion there is too much emphasis on equality in education and not enough on quality. The reason for this is that politics and sociology interfere with educational standards. In other words, standards of education are influenced by politics and sociology.

It is obvious that everyone is different and every child has different abilities. One may be good at mathematics, another may be good at languages. Some children like academic subjects while others prefer to do things with their hands. But there are a large number of educational theorists who disregard this. They ignore the fact that every child has different abilities. They insist that all children are equal and so every child must receive the same education. There is little justification for this point of view; such theorists cannot give acceptable explanations. Besides, every examination proves it wrong. So the theorists go further and argue that all examinations are bad because it is unfair and socially undesirable for one child to get more marks in a test than another. There is a great deal of hypocrisy and self-interest in this argument. All it proves, in my view, is that the theorists are afraid of parents' reactions when their theories are put into practice and shown to be nonsense. It is only natural for parents to want their children to be more successful than others and pass examinations.

Of course it is true that forty or fifty years ago a large number of children were prevented from getting a good education because their parents could not afford it. But the children who suffer nowadays are the exceptionally intelligent ones. Those who are unusually intelligent suffer a lot because they do not receive individual attention. It is therefore quite clear to me that every child should have the opportunity to learn, but each child should be treated as an individual.