Sn&,—The article `No Room for Compromise' was an interesting one
to me, because I have taught in a wide spectrum of schools from a preparatory boarding school to a state primary in Scotland and a boarding establishment for army apprentices.
Mr Bruce Lockhart did not mention what I con- sider the most telling argument against all boarding schools and that is very simply that there is no better place for a child to grow up to face the world than in his or her own home, in a familiar neighbourhood with the full range of its inhabitants as daily com- panions. The younger the child the more important this is. If we know enough about child psychology now to be able to say that removing a child of two or three from its mother for as little as a week has serious mental implications, who can say with authority that it really does a child good to remove it from home for several months at the age of thirteen or fourteen? I certainly do not believe Mr Lockhart has this authority; with every respect to his eminence in the field of education.
Ours is a remarkable country in which the RSPCA was I believe founded before the NSPCC. We still permit men to teach boys who have never been sent t ) a proper training establishment to give them some idea of how to go about the job. Some of them have never opened a book on the psychology of children. This is particularly true of the preparatory schools. Out of the ten men on the staff of the prep. school I taught in in Scotland only half had a degree and only one, myself, had a teacher's certificate.
It is only because the preparatory schools teach mainly children of above average intelligence that their shortcomings are not fully apparent. I suggest that at those public schools which do not insist on high common entrance passes the children would be better off in q. state school where, at least in Scotland if not always in England, the teachers are certificated.
In a less serious vein, may I ask the parents who send their boys to public schools if they would con- tinue to do grit the lad returned for the holidays
having picked up a marked cockney accent? Would they send the boy back for all that good education then?
P. J. MIDDLETON 14 Eden Place. Carlisle
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