Attitude Towards Religion
SIR,-1 have no doubt that the two headteachers and Dr. Halliday Sutherland are right in holding that " lack of discipline and soft psychology " (among other factors) are turning (some) modern children into " pestilential rotters." But Dr. Sutherland has been be trayed by rancour out of his usual clear-mindedness when he holds that the B.B.C. Educational Policy may be largely responsible for this. He states that the B.B.C. do not regard themselves as a religious corporation, and that their policy of allround toleration makes a bedlam of inconsistency. This is no doubt true. hut there are two points that must be raised, in justice to Truth,
and the B.B.C.
Whilst the general policy of the B.B.C. is necessarily inconsistent with the theory of a Christian State, the defects complained of do not appreciably extend to the Educational Policy. The Schools Broadcasts. Children's Hour, etc., are to a surprising, and (I think) increasing. extent, Christian, and sound. Should Dr. Sutherland really insist that the children's broadcasts include atheist, or otherwise pernicious, elements, then I would ask for other evidence than the example he cites of slightly hazy terminology used by one speaker (do our Catholic speakers invariably show scholastic precision ?) and his somewhat rash " bet" that the Children's Hour clergyman has been " forbidden " to use the word " sin." Over Christmas, I had to listen to hours of the B.B.C., and I wonder whether its bitter critics have done the same, humbly and without a rancorous desire to cry its imperfections into monstrous crimes. The broadcasts for grown-ups and children have, on the whole been strongly, and sanely, orthodox, full of the poetry of the incarnation. Our Lady's Motherhood. and the old Latin, Christian, tradition. And during one Children's Hour, I couldn't help thinking that if the teaching given to our children in convents is anything like as firm, imaginative, and sensible as that here given, then thank God for that!
HUGO YARDLEY.
Ilighwood Bottom, Speen, Aylesbury, Bucks.