Editor,

What the article ("Loads of homework make Jack a dull boy," December 22) said is true. Homework needs to be meaningful and thought-provoking and productive.

I read recently in China Daily that only 10 per cent of students graduating from universities in China are prepared to work for a multinational company. Part of the problem is that even after 10 years or more of studying English they cannot use it. On the other hand, multinational companies want students who can think and apply what they have learned.

Education must change before another generation of young Chinese are lost. As frustrated and disappointed school children are exposed to more and more in the outside world, they are going to yearn for money and begin leaving school to find menial jobs. This is only going to complicate the problem.

Children are the nation's treasure. It is time to give them proper school education.

Bill via e-mail

Editor,

Very good article. As a foreign oral English teacher I am appalled at the lack of resources available to students of all ages. The great leaders are not academics, they are thinkers. And only through knowledge and experience can they become great thinkers. The knowledge is not available in just textbooks; the experience is not just in doing homework.

China has made great strides towards development, but she will never be great until she allows her children to be children, and promotes the development of thinkers.

DJ via e-mail

Editor,

Einstein wasn't initially a good student but had lots of talent. His teachers said he wasn't focused but time proved otherwise. Perhaps as one teacher suggested: "He is inattentive and always looking out the window!" It makes me wonder what was outside that classroom's window that held his attention. The school system evidently did him a lot of good and we'd be worse off without that inattentive student regardless of what his teachers said.

CF via e-mail

Editor,

I have a son who is studying in a key senior middle school in Wuhan of Hubei Province. He is tired of learning and doing exercises and testing every day and every week, but I can't help him. I can only persuade him to hold on, to do as the other teenagers do. Life for them is miserable. They are the victims of the present education system.

Alice, Hubei Province

Help farmers

become richer

Editor,

I like the article "Helping farmers raise income level" (January 4).

As UK farmers ourselves, visiting agricultural areas in China in 2003 and 2005, we were constantly made aware of the low returns and poor margins received by those who work the land.

It is the same today in almost every nation on Earth.

Primary production has never received adequate reward except in times of dire shortage and the middleman is always the one to prosper.

The Chinese Government has acknowledged the value of its farming population with the removal of the historic tax, however, the income gulf between those who live in urban areas and those who work the land remains wide. The skill will be to find a lasting solution to this imbalance.

Kayjay, UK

(China Daily 01/06/2006 page4)