12 JUNE 2004, Page 33

Family affairs

From Geoffrey Lee Sir: Virginia Ironside's letter (5 June) in

response to Rachel Johnson's article about corporal punishment asserts that 'polite, considerate parents breed polite, considerate children'.

If she. as I did regularly as a housemaster, had looked into the tearful eyes of many such parents, baffled and dismayed by the conduct of their children, or conversely into the eyes of sensitive children determined to rise above the philistinism and neglect of their parents, she might have glimpsed a more complex situation than her simple proverb appears to suggest.

Geoffrey Lee

Willasion, Cheshire