WILLIAM McIlvanney reflects what many of us feel has gone wrong with education. Like him, I went to teacher training: for me it was in the late 1950s, but in Edinburgh, to Moray House College, as it was then known. We were introduced to ''look and say'' as the new, revolutionary, way of teaching reading. Primary school pupils were expected to look at words and say them and, forgetting the alphabet and its derivative, spelling, magically learn to read: each word memorised as a picture.

Later I was employed teaching physics, where I was confronted with lookandsayers. It was impossible to understand their write-ups of experiments: their word-pictures were so far removed from the words needed.

When pupils are allowed to express themselves without the benefit of spelling and grammar they fail to communicate. Apart from that the lack of precision, in their early Engish education, left them ill fitted to appreciate and handle the precise nature of physics and, presumably, the other sciences.

Your accompanying cartoon illustrates beautifully one feature of what has been going on but missed by the author: it is the publish-or-be-damned phenomenon which has always permeated the sciences and has, more recently, dominated education. The educational theorists getting their teeth into the latest fad (rubber bone) are doing so because their munchings over the bone are published in the relevant (now there's a questionable adjective) journals and their careers can be thus advanced without their ever having to expose themselves to the real world of the classroom.

Dr Spock, mentioned by Willian McIlvanney, made his reputation on half-baked ideas, and when they were found wanting he bravely admitted his error and promptly published a new batch. That's the spirit; publish and thrive; if found out, publish some more, and thrive some more; whatever the cost in young lives.

As William McIlvanney says, they don't have the children's interests at heart. All that matters is the next publication.

J F Doyle,

1 Craigshiel Place, Ayr. February 7.

IT is difficult to disagree with the sentiments expressed in Judith Gillespie's letter today. If head teachers are encountering administrative and resource difficulties in managing their properties then members of the chartered surveying profession will be only too willing to assist. Leave the management of building maintenance to the property profession and allow teachers to teach.

Graeme E Hartley,

Deputy Director,

Royal Institution of Chartered

Surveyors in Scotland,

9 Manor Place, Edinburgh.

February 5.