THANK God for Chris Titley, whose views on education shed light into a dark and gloomy place ('We're testing to the limit', June 27 and 'School's right out', June 28).

His comment that: "Testing on animals is discouraged. Testing on children is a national sport" deserves to go down in contemporary history.

There's a cold wind blowing from Whitehall. It seems that so hard pressed are head teachers and their staff that precious matters such as emotional maturation, environmental care, parentcraft and preparation for creative leisure (a better answer than policing and prisons for the preventing of social disorder) may be forced out of the regimen. Everything is out of balance.

The impression given is that "education" is managed by advisors to Mr. Blair who have never been young and don't care about causing stress to teachers or those they teach.

Steadfastly following a false light, these people think they are successfully "educating". They don't consider that emotionally-deprived, clever-clever young people, or just plain bored, do not add to the good of society, do not make good parents and that at the end of that road lies the violence and social disintegration which everyone deplores.

Roy Stevens,

Willow Bank,

New Earswick, York.

Updated: 10:37 Thursday, July 05, 2001