The cruel, repressive sound of silence

I presume the co-headteachers of Ninestiles (School under fire over ‘silent corridor’ rule, 22 October) are instructing teachers to plan unexciting lessons that do not stimulate minds beyond the particular session? Nothing in the lesson that might provoke continuing discussion afterwards? No cliffhanger questions to be explored in homework or before the next lesson in the same subject?

Still, I’m confident the young people will find plenty of creative silent ways to prove they are still alive.
Ted Pawley
(Former headteacher), Great Linford, Milton Keynes

• In the 1950s I went to a school which forbade talking in corridors, on pain of detention. We also wore blue pinafores all day and large velour hats outside, changed our shoes every time we ventured out of the building, and were forbidden to go to the cinema in term-time – even at half-term if there was flu about. I had thought such restrictions were things of the past. As a teacher myself in more recent times, I would expect this rule to result in noisier, not more studious, behaviour in the classroom.
Alison Edwards
Blakeney, Gloucestershire

• My school had a rule of no talking in the corridors during the 1950s and 1960s when I was suffering from a good “education”. Any detected or imagined infringement meant that the black-cassocked sadists who ran the school would batter or cane you. All this did was to generate resentment and enormous ill-feeling. The fact that the school had a strong academic record did not in any way assuage the feelings of the pupils (inmates?) that they would love to see the school burnt down along with almost all of the religious teaching staff. To get the full 1950s experience I went through, perhaps the headteachers of the Ninestiles school should argue for the return of caning and battering children as well.
John Cookson
Bournemouth

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