29 AUGUST 1987, Page 19

Sweet waste of effort

Sir: I continue to be puzzled by the label Marxist-Leninist which you and many other papers attach to the government of Nicaragua (Leading article, 15 August). It is not that to me Marxist-Leninist is a pejorative term but is it the correct one? I would have thought that Nicaragua was the first Latin American country under author- itarian rule (Somoza supported by the United States) to have reverted by revolu- tion in the direction of democracy.

You write that 'education is now indis- tinguishable from indoctrination'. Can you give us details of what the schools are now `indoctrinated'? What books are the chil- dren reading? What subjects are they taught? You might indeed have reason to fear that under a minister of education who is a Jesuit priest the 'indoctrination' may be too Catholic though that seems hardly necessary in a country quite as Catholic as Poland, but of course there may well be understandably a bias towards liberation theology. But Marxist-Leninist?

Graham Greene

Antibes