CONFLICT IN THE SCHOOLS
SIR,—Ahhough I warmly sympathise with much that Mr. Packer has to say, it is certain that he underestimates the problem of time. It is easy enough to make a study of transport with particular reference to an arterial road passing the school, but when we reach things like the study of subjunctives in French, or logarithms, the problem is not such an easy one. Even to teach this to intelligent boys individually a certain amount of time would be needed, and the cost of providing adequate individual instruction for boys would be great.
Whenever I see an article like Mr. Packer's I pounce upon it and humbly try to glean some help from it, but I am generally left rather disappointed. The really difficult problem of how to make abstract sub- jects appeal to concrete-Minded•boys is rarely touched upon. Surely Mr. Packer is a little bit hard on headmasters. I will not defend myself as a headmaster, but I will say that I have served under four headmasters in the past and I have always met With enthusiastic encouragement for any experiment I have wished to carry out. One gets rather tired of the continual assumption of some people that those who are appointed to a position of responsibility are appointed because they are bigger nitwits
King's College, Taunton. Headmaster.
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