13 NOVEMBER 1942, Page 12

SIR,—Your article " Religion and the Schools," and many others

I have read, leaves out the Roman Catholic schools in discussing this question, stressing the Church of England schools as the non-provided schools, and yet I consider the serious opposition is going to come from the Roman Catholic element. I presume it is intended to bring the Roman Catholic schools under the same jurisdiction as other schools in the matter of control, and it is from this source the opposition will be bitterest.

I am a supporter of doing away with dual control entirely, and I cannot understand under the ethics of Christianity how the urge of denominationalism should weigh heavier in the mind of any person as against the well-being of a child. I would a thousand times prefer my child to be housed in a sanitary and hygienic school and have no religious training than suffer in the atmosphere and depressing surround- ings of one of the condemned schools. Surely with the country teeming as it does with Sunday schools and churches, it is defeatism to put denomination first in this matter of the child's welfare. —Yours, &c.,

6 Rookway, Alkrington, Middleton. W. WHITEHILL.