Teaching positives

Arguably Doctors Cameron and Brown (Letters, 26 and 27 July) are blinkered by rose-tinted glasses in their criticisms of education. Why do they think education ought to be like it was 60 or 70 years ago?

Our memories aren’t reliable when it comes to giving factual accounts of the past. As one eminent psychologist puts it: “The curtain between imagination and memory is flimsier than most people realise.”

Why is it neither doctor mentions the pain inflicted in schools and the mindless rote learning? We ought to celebrate the good teachers do and encourage pupils and students to achieve more. The error based on the “illusion of memory” is to label education a failure when it is different.

Ellis Thorpe

Old Chapel Walk

Inverurie, Aberdeenshire