I am writing in reply to Larry Sanders’ letter “School fight got results” Oxford Mail (February 24).

I would like to point out that none of Mr Sanders’ comments relate directly to how children are actually taught to read and write in our schools.

All these proposed school reorganisations are related to widespread classroom failure, which is the responsibility of teachers and heads.

No-one is blaming the teachers, and nor am I. But the teaching methods are the problem.

Most teachers today were not born when these problems became ingrained. After old fashioned ‘rote’ learning was abolished in the 1960s, it became necessary for all parents to help their kids at home.

For those already doing that, it wasn’t a problem. But for those without help at home, obtaining literacy became even more difficult.

Teachers will not understand this because they will be using classroom methods today which they can remember being used when they were children.

Therefore they are convinced those methods work.

It worked for teachers when they were kids because their parents picked up the slack.

When I went to school there was no slack and the orphans I met in the Navy, who were educated in the 1950s, were just as literate as any other kid.

S. NICHOLSON, Campbell Road, Cowley