Training College

Sir—I am deeply ashamed.

I have hatred and contempt for training college students. Claudia Coory, in her Salient Editorial last week, assured me that student teachers are reviled by normal students like you and me. You and I have this attitude that "training college students are in an intellectually inferior institution and that deserve nothing but contempt." We think of student teachers as "a marauding tribe Intent on destruction" and of the university as "a convent to remain aloof from the world."

Honestly, I didn't know! Who would have thunk that a peaceful, harmless person like me had such reactionary attitudes? How was it that I never suspected that "many student teachers do traverse the mighty walls of the university, almost to be overcome by the intellectual snobbery exuding from the lecture theatres"? How long have I been persecuting training college students?

It's got to stop. It's not good enough for we normal students to protest that we've never sneered at student teachers or to pretend that we can't tell the difference between student teachers and normal students. They know that we have this hatred and contempt for them and if can't go on any longer. They must be brought in from the cold, clapsed to our collective bosom, etc., etc. But I hope that Claudia Coory won't mind my suggesting that, if we are to "raise the status of training college students (to use her expression), they would generally assist us by carrying small placards reading: "I am a despised student teacher. Love me." Or something along those lines, anyway.