How to kill reading

Sir: I am appalled by the response to Andrew Watts’s concerns about the teaching of reading at his son’s school. His article reveals a system almost guaranteed to discourage reading and an alarming turning away by a school from its responsibility to parents who have entrusted it with their children (‘Schoolboy error’, 17 January).

Effective reading involves immersing oneself in the text without distractions, going at one’s own pace. The degree of involvement will be determined by the material and by the engagement of the reader. The remark by Andrew’s son’s head of English, that the school’s reading programme was not supposed to encourage reading for pleasure, indicates a wilful disdain for effective reading. In Dagenham some years ago, my class of 15-year-old boys had one 30-minute lesson each week when they had to read in silence. They could bring books of their choice, and after ten minutes they could start another book. These boys passed O-level English language a year early, and from this class came the school’s first Oxbridge scholar.

For a headteacher to fail to respond to an email about such an important matter is unconscionable. The school is abdicating the trust it has accepted and should not be surprised if the boy is taken elsewhere.

Peter Inson

Former head and English examiner for A-level and the International Baccalaureate

East Mersea, Essex

Words worth

Sir: As one who has been known to err on the Victorian side of parenting, has children likely to be found reading at any given moment, and who has also been presented with Sparx Reader in our local academy, my eye was caught by Andrew Watts’s article.

I suggest that the inflexibility he encounters comes more from the school than the software, as in Year 7 my children were offered the opportunity to request a ‘gold reader pass’. This pass allows the software to scan an ISBN code of any printed book they choose, ask them what page they are starting on and what the first three words of the page are, and sets a timer. At the end they note what page they finished on, and the last three words, and write their own questions and answers for what they’ve read. Thus bureaucracy is satisfied, teachers see that students have engaged, and real books are read. Perhaps Andrew could request that from the school his son attends?

Andrew Weir

Durham

Lessons for Rod

Sir: As a teacher in a comprehensive school, I may be in the minority as a Spectator subscriber. That’s why it hurts all the more to read Rod Liddle label teachers as ‘pig-ignorant dunderheads’ who lead ‘wretched, impotent lives’ (‘The age of absolutism’, 17 January). I can assure him that this is usually not the case. In my school, and in many others, controversial issues are approached evenhandedly and with nuance. Nevertheless, he should be thanked for his implicit call for increased education funding: things are certainly wretched at the moment. Liddle’s hyperbole is occasionally amusing, but often inaccurate.

Ben Taberer

Oxford

Still their MP

Sir: Sandra Jones is mistaken when she says that Danny Kruger disenfranchised 16,849 people who voted for a Conservative MP at the last election (Letters, 17 January). The constituents voted for an individual, not a party. An MP represents in parliament the interests and concerns of all their constituents, whether they voted for them or not, or did not vote at all. That duty does not change with the political complexion of the winner, nor if the winner changes party. It is this link with their MP that is of most value to constituents, even if the majority of them are not aware of it. The MP can, of course, be voted out at the next general election.

Malcolm Watson

Ryde, Isle of Wight

One liner

Sir: My late father told me of a friend of his, an upright Englishman, who used to travel to New York in the 1930s but always went on the French liner Normandie rather than the Queen Mary (Arts, 17 January). My father asked for an explanation of his lack of patriotism, only to be told there was ‘None of that damned nonsense about women and children first’!

Mark Burnyeat

Odiham, Hampshire

Bloodcurdling oaths

Sir: William Atkinson’s sympathetic examination of freemasonry made light of the insistence of the Metropolitan Police that officers reveal their membership (‘Band of brothers’, 10 January), and suggested masons are just decent chaps who like meeting for dinners and a bit of dressing-up. This might satisfy the constabulary, but it won’t do for Christians. The masonic reference to God as ‘Jahbulon’ – whatever the word’s derivation – is unacceptable. The supposed secrets of the Craft and its practice of taking bloodcurdling oaths on the Bible ought to shock those who take the Word of God seriously. Protestants might turn a blind eye to those who frequent the lodge, but the Vatican Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2023 reaffirmed that Catholics are forbidden from being freemasons.

Francis Bown

London E3

Pathological interest

Sir: I was irritated by Patrick West’s sneer at ‘grown-ups of an immature disposition’ and especially Gunther von Hagens in his article about museum displays of human remains (Arts, 10 January). Von Hagens did not spend his entire career ‘enticing’ people to ‘ogle preserved body parts’. He originated the technique of plastination, which enables preserved organs to be handled safely and directly in place of inspecting murky glass jars or Perspex boxes, an immense contribution to morbid anatomy, the foundational science of pathology. His Body Works exhibitions and their superb dissections are genuinely fascinating, rekindling the public interest in the human body begun in the Renaissance by Vesalius.

Basil Purdue

Iwerne Minster, Dorset

Burnt offerings

Sir: As a roast potato aficionado, I largely agree with Olivia Potts’s method (The Vintage Chef, 10 January). However, I would add a warning. In her method, she mentions preheating the oven as hot as it will go (so far, so good!) but there are no further instructions to reduce the heat once the pan is hot. I write with caution, because this Christmas my brother-in-law was in charge of roast potatoes and, having failed to cast an eye over them for ‘a while’, he returned to find a scene darker than Scrooge’s heart. The official line was to blame the children. Unfortunately I’d already put his present under the tree.

Tim Hales

London W6

Dry wit

Sir: Dry January can be a civilised time (Drink, 17 January). With dry sherry, dry white wine and dry champagne, there is much to enjoy. True, it can sometimes feel rather abstemious to start the year on such a low sugar note, but it is only for a month.

Richard Ellis

London EC4