Double-think on edyoocayshun

Okay, so what have we missed here? Westmonster was under the impression that conservatives (with both a small and a large "c") looked back at the 1950s with fondness as a time where children were taught proper subjects, learned hard, and were seen and not heard.

"Ah," they say over a glass of pink gin, "I remember walking through three miles of snow to get to school. We had to communicate the entire day in Latin and sometimes purposefully confused our genitives and ablatives in order to enjoy a good birching from the headmistress. Kids today don't know they're born."

But today's study says that children today have better literacy abilities (albeit only "slightly") than those enjoyed by their 1950s counterparts, so Fraser Nelson's more-in-sadness-than-in-anger post on the state of the education system has confused us somewhat. What happened to the myth of the golden age?

Then again, Westmonster did go to one of those awful state comprehensives so she may well be proving Mr Nelson's point.