Common sense, moral vision — and the magic touch

An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Education is Tony Little’s valedictory meditation on his profession, published on his retirement as headmaster of Eton. In a series of loosely connected essays, erudite and eccentric, he contemplates issues of fundamental concern to us all. What are schools for? How should teachers be educated? How do good schools work?

The book is rather oddly larded with insights from The Schoolmaster (1902) by A.C. Benson (brother of E.F. and Robert Hugh) who was, like Little, an Old Etonian who went back to teach at the school. Benson’s commentary on his own teaching experience is used as a touchstone, generally reinforcing Little’s civilising, rational approach to education.

These essays reveal Little’s vigorous moral vision. He believes in character and discipline, in agreeing boundaries and in giving boys a second chance, but possibly not a third.

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He is interested in character education but acknowledges that this is a difficult issue for many schools. Eton has the advantage of time (its teachers are less constrained by bureaucracy than those in the state sector), resources and tradition. Crucially, it has teachers who ‘get it’, and it also has a thicket of traditions to underpin character education. ‘It becomes a virtuous circle: when a school has the confidence born of experience to give time and resources to character education, the more confidence it breeds in teachers.’

Young people grow to be part of the tribe at school, ‘learning where the parameters of behaviour lie, learning to accept and value discipline’. Society needs individuals with imagination and energy ‘but just as importantly it needs individuals to exercise restraint. Curbing personal dreams for a greater good is a defining mark of civilisation.’

Eton works, Tony Little says, because its pupils believe in the school and in its ways of doing things.