Poles apart
From Mr John Moloney Sir: Neil Clark (`East is Eden'. 20 July) amply demonstrates that biased praise is every bit as annoying as prejudice. No more, please, about the romantic, erudite noblemen of the east. Being married to a Pole and having lived in Warsaw for a decade, I can assure you that such a beast is as much a fantasy as the romantic, erudite Arab nomad of popular imagination.
The participation rate of Polish youth in higher education is below 10 per cent, and Polish society is every bit as generously endowed with thugs and delinquents as England. The Polish education system — like the French, on which it is based — assumes that inside every child there lurks an intellectual. The nine-tenths who are not are tortured by Gradgrind-like demands to absorb endless facts without the least practice in how to use them. Another result is endemic cheating, which along with corruption and bribery is a life-skill to be learnt early over here if one is to survive. Mr Clark's Eden exists only in the minds of the self-obsessed urban elite.
John Moloney
Warsaw, Poland
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