Your correspondents who take Mrs I'. McNulty (May 25) to task with regard to private education seem to miss the point and introduce a number of inaccuracies.
One could list a variety of ways in which private education is harmful and divisive. However, if your correspondents are not familiar with the social and economic problems. and the inequalities which private education perpetuates, then they must have led very sheltered lives.
May one just correct a few points? Members of religious orders who teach in such schools as Ampleforth. Douai, etc. have not dedicated their lives to Catholic education. They have merely chosen to teach in schools which. are not only divisive but whose main criteria for entrance is the ability to par
1 rue. Catholic education is to he found in the local comprehensive school which accepts children as they are from wealthy homes or poor homes.
'the scholarships and bursaries which private schools offer are few in number and merely a sop to stifle efiticism and mollify pricked consciences.
The Child Poverty Action Group calculates that even now there are 3.9 million children below or near the poverty line within the United Kingdon.
To their credit many members of religious orders have dedicated themselves to helping such children. This is not quite such pleasant work as teaching in an independent school.
Other religious orders have rethought their position and taken up teaching in tough, inner-city areas. That requires dedication!
Finally, may 1 ask your correspondents to remember that if a certain Carpenter's Son sought entrance to Ampleforth or Douai he would he asked for the odd 0,000 or Si.).
P. J. Braley Braintree, Essex.