SIR, What I object to in Jim Starling's Holiday is
not that the characters are rough secondary modern school boys, but that the story, intended, apparently, for boys in this type of school, suggests to them that inattention and bad conduct in class, regular scrap- ping and ragging in school and out, and anti-social behaviour generally, which is so much on the increase today, are normal, amusing traits of `Modern Youth.' Mr. Hildick presents his Jim Starling and Co. as tough heroes, who, in spite of frequent nastiness, are finally rewarded. In my experience of teaching in a typical secondary modern
school, it is this kind of boy who not only wears many teachers out by constantly interrupting and delaying lessons, but who also prevents those children who want to learn from doing so, and in this particular school a number hoped to take some GCE '0' Level subjects. In addition, the Jim Starlings waste the large sums of public money spent on their free education, as well as being mainly responsible for a constant succession of teachers in these schools, some of whom develop worse symptoms than twitching cheeks or rashes.
I have taught all sorts of boys, ranging in age from five to nineteen years, in nearly all kinds of schools for boys in this country, and I can certainly assure Mr. Hildick that there are a great many modern 'kids' who have 'guts' and yet are well behaved and hard-working at school—who even enjoy lessons—and who spend their leisure in more profitable ways than in fighting and jeering at each other, misbehaving in trains, making and throwing soot bombs and chucking blankets in streams.— Yours faithfully,
ROSEMARY THOMPSON
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