Compelling Evidence


 

To ask the question again, How could we possibly know who the best teachers in the world are? Have we tried to assess the competence of every other teacher in the world? And anyway, even if we had (which of course we have not), how could we possibly have done such a thing with even the remotest degree of success?

What, however, if the reason were not any special talents in us, but simply a reflection of the manner of teaching as it used to be and the manner of teaching virtually everywhere today?

What if the difference were the reflection of nothing more complicated than the difference between the teaching of today since the 1960s and the teaching throughout the whole of the recorded history of education before that?

What if the traditional teaching, tried and tested century after century, can be shown to be, not just a few percentage points better than is to be found anywhere else, but so dramatic, in terms of the effectiveness, efficiency and speediness of the teaching of the various academic subjects, as to be beyond any normal basis of comparison?

And what if it be the case that we are now the only teachers left in a position know from experience how teaching used to be done? — as, to the best of our knowledge, we are?

Anyway, either there is sufficient evidence – evidence that is completely clear-cut and inescapable – to decide the question, or there is not. And if the evidence indeed be sufficient, it is surely something that parents who genuinely want the best for their children would like to know about, as we certainly should if we were in their shoes.

Accordingly, we have put together a compilation of evidence of different kinds that we have become aware of, all pointing in the same direction, for you to consider. We invite you to examine this evidence for yourselves; and we should welcome your views on it, whatever conclusion you end up reaching.

We have taught pupils in every circumstance from private houses to lecture halls and “face-to-face” over the internet in over a dozen countries age-groups from 3 to 70 the following subjects: English grammar and composition, Latin, Greek, French, German, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, history, geography, handwriting, religion, philosophy in general and logic in particular, and even music.

We think we are the only people whose style of teaching has featured prominently in newspapers, which has happened several times.

The newspaper articles have sometimes, at our request, included our often-repeated challenge, based on plenty of experience over the years, that we reckon to be able to teach, for instance, more Latin in an hour or less than any child at school, however bright, will have learnt in up to five years. Absurd? Only very, very seldom has a response to our challenge been successful. Feel free to try!

Another consequence of the newspaper articles is that we have been invited by several schools to visit them and explain how our much-more-effective traditional system of teaching works, and to demonstrate it in their classrooms these fundamentals of teaching as it always used to be done. We doubt if such a thing has ever happened before in the history of education. Yes, experts are invited to schools to teach such things as new technology, but not to teach the very basics of teaching.

Well, both individually and in total, all this seems to us to be – as we said earlier – a compelling collection of evidence. Do please let us know what you think of it, together with any reasons supporting what you think.