Middle-Class Argument Sitt,—May I put a question to your correspondent,
Mr. D. Willott ? I am a university graduate, a trained teacher, now a housewife with one son of eight. I have voluntarily undertaken a part-time teaching post (and both my husband and I a good deal of self-sacrifice) in order to send my son to a preparatory school where he is one of a class of 21. At the nearby elementary school, excellent as ,regards building and equipment, the comparable class is over 50 and growing. This alone we regard as a damning disadvantage.
I wish to ask Mr. Willott this question. I do extra work and spend the money on my son's education. Would he object if I worked long hours to buy and maintain a car, or spent the money on frivolities ? Or would he then object that I was having an unfair share of those things ?
Incidentally my on works a good deal harder than the elementary school child, and I personally consider that we are entitled to some advantage for our greater-than-average effort.—Yours truly,
Banstead, Surrey. HOUSEWIFE.
SIR,—We sent our son to a prep. school. He is now at a public school. We hope he will in twd years go up to Oxford. Mr Willott asks Jane—and us—what right we have to be able to afford this, when millions of children are in understaffed State schools. In our vil!age school are children whose parents earn much more than my husband and I do. We and they have a different scale of values. It is not a matter of praise or blame ; just an inheritance.
We cannot afford any domestic help. I have not been away for a holiday for eleven years. farm the glebe, only eleven acres, worse luck! I was a country girl, brought up, so to speak, in the stables. so it was not difficult to switch over to cows. I get up at 5.30 and go to bed about 10 o'clock. I am terribly lucky because I'm a round peg in a round hole. I have one regret—our lovely neglected garden, and in the same instant comes envy of Mrs. Hamilton's pretty garden and Dutch bulbs and ability to keep awake in the evening to listen to
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