Letters to the Editor | 18 March 2006

Schools aren’t clubs

From Nicholas Nelson
Sir: Have you given proper thought to the reason that we have an education system (Leading article, 11 March)? Our schools have an essential list of objectives which includes ensuring that young people absorb a body of knowledge and acquire skills that match their potential, and emerge as adults with an ability to assess their world critically and communicate with their fellow human beings. The way you would do this is to hive off 25 per cent or so into exclusive clubs so that they leave school with a strong body of knowledge but no clue about how to communicate with the other 75 per cent. This is why members of the political class are so often completely divorced from the many millions who would rather vote for Big Brother than for any of them.
Nicholas Nelson
By email

Where trendy Parisians go

From Daniel T. Perkins
Sir: I agree with Allister Heath’s view of the Imprimerie Nationale and the passport debacle (‘300,000 Frenchmen can’t be wrong’, 11 March), but the remainder of his article is unfair.