Clyde Chitty 31 August 1944 – 7 November 2022
Posted on 17/11/2022
The whole point of comprehensive education was to establish the concept of educability, the idea that all children have talents and abilities which are there to be fostered and developed by creative and committed teachers…. [T]he comprehensive reform has no meaning unless it challenges the fallacy of fixed ability or potential in education. It should aim to dismantle all the structures rooted in that fallacy…
Thus Clyde Chitty at the beginning of his contribution to ‘Promoting Comprehensive Education in the 21st Century’, a short collection published in 2001 which he edited with Brian Simon. These words encapsulate what Clyde fought for all his life as he worked to understand the politics of educational change in England and to change the education system.
And how he worked! The author, co-author or editor of some thirty books and reports on the history and politics of education, Clyde disdained to take a holiday, preferring to pore over his library of newspaper cuttings and research papers as he weighed up the trajectory of contemporary education policy before writing trenchantly of its shortcomings or offering a principled and better-grounded alternative.
Clyde joined the FORUM Editorial board in the autumn of 1974 and soon took charge of the reviews section of the journal. In the summer of 1989, when Brian Simon stepped down, he joined Nanette Whitbread as co-editor. He continued in an editorial role until ill-health forced him very reluctantly to give up regular work on the journal at the end of 2014. His last editorial characteristically cast a cold eye over the debacle of the Govian reforms, not least the politicization of OfSTED, while also finding a way to look with hope to the future.
Interviewed a year or two a later by Jane Martin and Melissa Benn, long-time colleagues and friends, Clyde was typically judicious, witty and shrewd in his assessment of the successes and failures of the comprehensive movement, an assessment informed by the life he had dedicated to that movement’s consolidation and advance. (A transcript of this interview is available, beginning in FORUM 59/3 and concluding in FORUM 60/1.) The extent of Clyde’s dedication may be gauged by Michael Armstrong’s designation of him as ‘the patron saint of comprehensive education’.
A committed socialist with a campaigning bent, Clyde always argued that FORUM had to maintain a campaigning as well as a critical aspect. He knew from experience what it was to be at the sharp end of educational reform as a classroom teacher as well as a school leader. He delighted to work with university students, and to hear of the successes of colleagues old and new on the FORUM Board. He maintained resolutely that the informal lunch the Board often enjoys before each scheduled formal meeting—a lunch over which Clyde presided with charm and ésprit—was much the more productive and enjoyable part of the occasion. With anecdotes of the academic and political worlds, stories of his own early life, informed appreciation of the music of Mahler, Shostakovich and above all Bruckner, an encyclopaedic knowledge of goings-on in Ambridge and an eye for the grace and drama of professional tennis—the only sport he seems to have tolerated—Clyde entertained. He met the ill-health which overshadowed his last years with resilience and courage, wryly reminding visitors that his father—a man he detested—had bequeathed him a condition which gradually calcified his arteries or, as Clyde put it, hardened his heart.
In truth, Clyde’s heart was warm and large. As we wrote when he relinquished his editorial duties:
With scholarly rigour and polemic élan he has advanced the cause of non-selective schooling. In many a FORUM article and Editorial he has challenged governments of all stripes when their policies on education have harmed the interests of pupils and students, or undermined the work of dedicated teachers. Clyde has been a mainstay of the journal. He embodies its tradition of intellectual honesty and engagement, principled commitment, creative action and unswerving belief in the educational and social benefits to be derived from comprehensive schooling.
We send condolences to Clyde’s family, and to his partner Chi.
A full appreciation of Clyde’s work will appear in a future number of FORUM. The editor invites readers to share their memories.
Patrick Yarker, on behalf of the FORUM Editorial Board.