22 JULY 1960, Page 16

RUBBING THE CORNERS OFF

SIR,—There is a revealing sentence in U. R. Q. Henriques's defence of the school she attended with Marghanita Laski : 'Pupils were called by their actual first names, not by flowery inventions of their own.'

How well this sums up the authoritarian arrogance of so many well-meaning English schools! Have children no right to decide what names they shall be called by, simply because they are children and may choose 'unsuitable' names? What is left to a child if it may not even choose its personal name? The school in question certainly seems to have suc- ceeded in its apparent intention to 'repress individ- uality' in at least one case.-- Yours faithfully,

NICOLAS WALTER