LETTER : A rat race which is breeding first-degree rats

THE MORE that the education system is run according to simple commercial axioms, the worse offences such as book slashing will get. Intense competition for good grades, and for employment, is leaving its mark. The rat race is breeding rats. Education should not be a competitive business. Great works of fine art, literature, natural science and history were not produced by people whose main motivation was simply to elbow others out of the limelight. Little erudition and scholarship will be generated in an envir- onment where students competing over inadequate library stock have to regard each other as rivals in the queue for employment.

Gary Slapper

Staffordshire University

Stoke-on-Trent