I was, to say the least, very concerned about the situation whereby a Somerset teacher had taped up the mouths of some of the children at the school during a lesson.

I can understand the dismay of the parents in many ways but when I was very young we were told “Children should be seen and not heard”.

In these days of ‘political correctness’, I hear of children needing to ‘express themselves’.

With the difference in discipline in today’s world compared with years ago, which I must say brought us to heel a lot better than it would these days, I can imagine the teacher becoming very frustrated when dealing with the few unruly children in the class. Over a period of time, I imagine that can get a bit tedious so, on the day in question, I think that the teacher had really had enough of this type of behaviour.

On that basis the teacher proceeded to use the ‘tape’ method, which caused the outrage!

I wonder how many people would really like to see that sort of thing take place more often?

When I travel on the bus, I am often subjected to the fact the children on the bus are ‘expressing themselves’, so I wish, at times, that I could use some tape on them and mobile phone users as well.

If I may suggest a common sense approach to this hullabaloo about the teacher in question, why not issue all teachers with a tape that sticks well and does the job, but does not take the skin off around the lips as well.

Surely in this day and age we can find this sort of tape. I would buy rolls and rolls of it!

Seriously, let us not blame the teacher too much unless we look at the whole picture of weeks and days of certain children who are regularly unruly, whose parents disregard this and blame the teacher’s attitude towards their child. Sometimes teachers have no positive course of action to allow a proper reprimand.

Chris Gleed, Proud Close, Purton, Swindon