Stephanie Merritt highlights a country-wide problem to which there can be some relief (“Squeezing out arts for more ‘useful’ school subjects harms our culture”, Comment.
Here in Dorchester, Dorset, we have a free-standing charity – Dasp Music – which tries to augment what the public sector provides.
Dorchester area schools partnership comprises 17 schools – primary, middle and secondary. The charity, funded by local organisations and individuals, provides vocal workshops and instrument tuition, the latter currently at 903 lessons each week of term.
The senior school, the Thomas Hardye school, is large, vibrant and successful in all areas, being the outcome of progression through all the local schools.
Music is important to pupils and the town, the Thomas Hardye school choir singing in cathedrals around Britain and abroad.
It provides a platform for all Dasp children, with some parents, to perform in classical concerts with our local choral society and a large orchestra of gifted students from the Imperial College London Orchestra.
Next Sunday, Dasp Music will fill the Weymouth pavilion for its summer concert, showcasing progress through the year and raising income.
Funding worries will increase. By involving the parents of pupils – past and present – in choirs and concerts we can encourage them to donate, along with local businesses and a Friends of Dasp Music, to be established.
There is no point in sitting back and hoping. We must all get involved directly with our local schools to help arts of all types to enthuse our children. And show local authorities the values that the arts instil.
Alexina and Anthony Gannon
Dorchester
Dorset
Technical studies need a boost
I read with interest your various pieces about the arts diminishing in school. The arts are lovely things and make life pleasant for us and are an avenue for expression.
It is a good thing that fewer students are choosing arts subjects at GCSE and A-level as maybe we can move to bring about a little more balance in the people who leave school.
Our society is dominated by the arts, celebrity and media (look what proportion of arts, celebrity and media coverage there is normally in the pages of your paper).
We desperately need technical people and we desperately need more exposure of technical issues and those technical people who are actually shaping our world making it rather a fun place to be.
When was the last time a technical person appeared on Question Time? We have loads of spare arts and media people.
John Maxwell Webb
Stonesby
Leicestershire
Luther event needs sensibility
If it is true (see review of Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet by Lyndal Roper, New Review) that Martin Luther was “an authoritarian scourge of popes and Jews” and preached: “The devil stuffs and squirts them so full that (satanic excrement) overflows and swims out of every place”, then Lutherans and others will need to be very careful in celebrating the 500th anniversary of the great Wittenberg event next year.
It is to be hoped that any celebrations will offer a candid critique of the great man who, in his eagerness to assert the values of the Protestant Reformation, seems to have gone right “over the top”. I hope, too, that his assertion about “scripture alone” will be contested. He was eager that the church that had ignored scripture for years should recover proper respect for it. But, in so doing, he led some people into bibliolatry, which has plagued humanity ever since.
People are preparing big events for 2017. Fair enough. But will they encourage Christian faith that honours experience and critical thought as well as scripture and tradition? 2017 could be a good year for religion. But it could also be an “annus horribilis”.
The Rev Paul King
Chesterfield
Turbine terminology
I just read the article on the London Array and wind power in general (“The wind in their sails”, New Review. I found it very interesting and informative until the author described the electricians, mechanics and seamen as “labourers”, a term that must have gone down really well with the highly skilled technicians involved!
JA Haslett
Herne Bay, Kent
Alas, I’m too old now to rebel
“Suez, Iraq, and now this.” In listing the three most calamitous prime ministerial decisions since the Second World War, William Keegan also recalls my three moments of greatest despair (“First the Suez crisis, then the invasion of Iraq. And now this referendum”, Business). For the first two, I could do something – insignificant and even petulant acts, but they made me feel a bit better. In 1956, I tore up my letter of recall to stand by in the Z Reserve; in 2003, I left the Labour party.
But this time, I’m too old to move house to Scotland and one generation adrift in applying for Irish citizenship. Lowest point yet.
John D Walsh OBE
Swindon
