Sta,—Many countrymen will be grateful to the Bishop of London
for drawing attention to the danger which now threatens country life through the policy of closing large numbers of village schools. Parliament can never have expected the great Butler Act to have any such effect. When the development plan for the county of Somerset is published I believe it will be found to entail the closing of at least 3o to 4o per cent. of our village schools. And the statistics given by the Bishop of London for some other counties are even more serious. But country people have not yet been given an opportunity of discovering what these new plans have in store for them ; when they do realise it the Government is likely to find itself in difficulties. One has the .impression that those responsible for so disastrous a policy have allowed themselves to be swayed by men whose training naturally leads them to produce a nice tidy plan on paper and one which avoids giving alarm to the ratepayer. But we are dealing here with the welfare of children, their parents and homes, and the future of our rural life. Anyone who is a member of a village community knows how vital are the village school and its teacher to the family and cultural life of the community. To close a single school that can be brought up to a fitting standard of equipment is a sheer disaster to any village. To do so on financial grounds or in the interests of what some people may think to be educational efficiency is to lose the true sense of our traditional values in the country.—I am, Sir, yours faithfully,
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