REGARDING last week's Citizen Smith article about declining standards of education, I fully agree with all the points raised.

There appears to be a golden rule which applies to everything these days - "if it ain't bust, don't fix it."

Our education system was not bust until we gave it over to people who wanted to complicate it.

I think we should return to the old way of things with school holidays cut, lessons from nine until four and a lunch break from 12pm until 1.30pm.

These were the days we knew where we were - a time when we were organised.

We should not allow these irresponsible trendies to have unlimited freedom to destroy our education system, especially one that produced such greats like Dickens, Wordsworth and Austen to name a few.

Francis Burns

Livesey Branch Road

Blackburn

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.