FROM SCHOOL TO UNIVERSITY

SIR,-As chairman of the Catholic society of one of the pro vincial Universities it has been my responsibility to meet many average products of our convent boarding schools, and I am afraid that in my experience (of necessity limited) the picture is far from healthy.
Girls are being catapulted into a University life for which they are totally unprepared. I do not pretend to know. for example, what sort of education they receive in sexual matters. but I am certain that it can only be either most unsuitable or clsc non-existent.
Coupled with this is the unfortunate fact that. as a result of the often enforced religious exercises which they have sometimes experienced for a total of perhaps seven years. their first reaction is often (certainly in several cases in my experience) to drift very quickly away from the practice of their religion to the glitter of the University social life. with often disastrous consequences.
Unless some of our religious orders move quickly into line with the more " liberal " orders in the field of education (dare I quote as " liberals " the Ursulines and the H.C.J. nuns?) this state of affairs will continue to cause grave concern.
Catholic Society Chairman
Lay Headships In Our Schools
SIR,-In your discussion on the education of grammar school girls, one correspondent undertakes the duty of criticising Catholic lay teachers and assessing their problem (or "grouse," as he calls it), and is qualified to do so by virtue of being a parent. His statement of the "grouse" is an incredible distortion of the facts.
The truth of the 'matter, as far as 30 years' teaching experience in Catholic schools assures me, is this: the headships of Catholic grammar schools have always been accepted as virtually the prerogative of priest or nun teachers; but the headships of our primary schools also are increasingly going the same way By implication, the only opportunity the Catholic lay teacher may have of promotion is dwindling to vanishing-point.
Is it any wonder, then. that the more able, ambitious, and energetic of them are looking to nonCatholic schools as more hopeful avenues of advancement in their profession? Your correspondent is gracious to point out the " apostolic opportunities " thereby opened up; but I doubt whether that suggestion is relevant, or even in good taste. Rather, I should consider whether or not it is hypocritical to deplore this "leakage" when the cause continues to be ignored. He implies, disingenuously, that lay teachers would seem to require the religious orders to " offer their headships to the lay staff ", or that " religious should be barred from the headships of parish schools ". Nothing of the sort. What we do require. in fact. is fair competition, open to all, for the only posts of authority in Catholic schools left to us, with some chance of fillng them.
R. J. W. Gentry 44 Flanders Road, London. W.4.
It is surely out of the question that most religious orders as at present constituted should be in a position to offer headships to lay teachers. It would be against their constitutions.-EDITOR,
Grammar School or Primary ?
S1R,-I wish I could be com forted by your footnote to Mr. Penty's letter that the authorities arc well aware of the necessity of providing grammar school accommodation,
It's my impression that the majority of money devoted to school building still mainly goes to the provision of primary schools. As both a one-time pupil and now a teacher. I believe this to be a mistaken policy, for the foifowing reasons: (1) The most formative years of a child's life are after the age of II rather than before.
(2) The State primary schools are better staffed than the State secondary moderns. I'd say, as a broad generalisation, that the teachers in the primary schools are usually more religious and offer a religious education concerned with the simpler less doctrinal aspects of Christianity which many Catholics would not find offensive.
The secondary modern schools on the other hand frequently find it difficult to find teachers to take all the periods designated Religious Instruction on the time-table, and in one school I taught at the period was devoted to such edifying literature as " Reveille", Yank Mags, or any reading material the student was accustomed to reading in his spare time. (3) In the hon-Catholic establishment I am teaching in at the moment there are six Catholics on the staff to my knowledge, three of whom are well qualified in the sciences, for which one understands there is such a shortage in our Catholic secondary schools. One of the reasons why they are not teaching in Catholic grammar schools is that so little is offered in the way of promotion. Surely the time is more than ripe from every point of view for a shift of emphasis to building grammar schools, if necessary staffed exclusively by laymen. to meet the needs of this country's educational requirements of providing highly qualified scientists. engineers. teachers. priests, and doctors
Bruce M. Cooper
12 Broom Close, Hatfield, Herts.