Letter: Active schooling

OVER AND over for the past 80 years Summerhill has stood as a bastion against "the British culture of humiliating children" which is forcing five-years-olds to read and do sums like robots before their brains have developed enough to tackle such work. Any decent neuro-psychologist will be able to tell you that boys in particular need more years for social and emotional skills to develop before being strapped to the academic mill. And anyone with eyes could see that mainland European countries, where formal primary schooling starts at seven, often have higher levels of literacy than we do.

TONY CROFTS

Witney, Oxfordshire