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Thanks for ruining my weekend with your latest issue. I suppose in the good old days, when we had staff rooms, there'd be a corner where people such as Gary Day (Columnist, February 16) could mutter quietly to themselves without annoying anyone.

Sadly, now it seems your opinion pages are the only place where he is able to rant about how, in his day, students did as they were told and "teaching" consisted of giving them a reading list and telling them to be "inspired". I can't decide whether to feel sorry for his students or happy - if they are allowed to get away with writing the ill-informed, patronising and pretentious rubbish he does then they are on to a winner.

Gary, some of us take teaching and learning seriously, and whatever your beef is with those who consider pedagogy useful, you might read the research you criticise rather than simply skimming the abstracts. You wouldn't let your students get away with it, so why should you?

Jonathan Baldwin.
Dundee University