MADAM – Jacqueline Peacey (letters, July 9) writes passionately against a new Steiner school for Stroud.
There are complex arguments to be had about the beneficence or otherwise of the Coalition’s free schools policy but it is perfectly logical to argue that while free schools are inadvisable in general, a new Steiner school would in practice bring many benefits to any area, including this one.
Jacqueline quite rightly refers to “so many of our young people suffering from mental problems,” but she fails to add the crucial qualification that it is our mainstream schooling system that is responsible for a good many of them, with our de-professionalised teachers and children relentlessly subjected to authoritarian disciplinary inspection regimes and an increasingly narrow, exam and test-obsessed curriculum that fails to nourish the all-round development of our children as future citizens.
A new Steiner school in any area would significantly improve the net emotional well-being and all-round resourcefulness of its pupils, compared with a typical mainstream schooling experience.
Dr Richard House
Educational consultant
Stroud