YOUR report (LET, December 8) highlights a developing problem over discipline in schools which is in need of some urgent and serious thought.

Children are becoming more and more uninhibited which at the appropriate time and in the appropriate place can only be a good thing for them. But, at the same time, education has been greatly intensified, requiring an appropriate degree of discipline in the classroom and of deference to those adults whose duty it is to impart that education.

Adult perception of children seems to vary from their being translated innocent angels yearning to be moulded into mature, liberal educated human beings, to their being vicious little jungle animals which we must take any Draconian measure to civilise, or God help us.

Wherever the truth lies, ill-disciplined children are difficult to educate. The situation is not helped by the new National Curriculum's emphasis on, even obsession with, academic achievement at the earliest age.

Some children are not academic by nature and some children develop their academic abilities later.

Some are never clever academically. It detracts not one jot from their status as young human beings that their purely-academic achievement is not high. They will undoubtedly have other qualities that will serve them - qualities that are in danger of being submerged.

Frustration is often a factor in difficult behaviour - in my own case, almost invariably and all my life. It seems to me that we are at a stage where all parties in the process of modern education - parents, pupils, schools' teaching and non-teaching staff, governors, administrators, policy makers and whoever - must make an effort to understand each other's difficulties.

If criticism is to be made it must be directed to the appropriate place, not just conveniently at the nearest person - and it must avoid the inexcusable and cowardly deviousness of anonymity.

The child's essential contribution to its education is reasonable behaviour at school. Most children need direction and incentive to achieve the necessary standard.

Unless there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary, parents must believe that teachers are acting in the best interests of their children, and vice-versa. That way we stand a much better chance of bringing out the genius that we all know is lurking inside all our children, whether it be in the head or, equally valuably, in the hands.

Since the introduction of the National Curriculum and local management of schools, many thousands of senior teachers have indicated their discontent by leaving the profession.

The dangers here are not only that education will be in the hands of inexperienced youngsters desperate for work - and cheap to hire - but that we shall find people in the classroom with our children from not the purest of motives.

It is perhaps not yet too late to stop this drain of experienced and proven teachers and to make the necessary alteration of course the education system needs.

I am indirectly connected with the school in your report, but I write this entirely privately.

D BOARDMAN, Crimpton, Cow Ark, Clitheroe.

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