AT the risk of turning this correspondence into a pantomime style ‘Oh yes I did...Oh no you didn’t’ situation, I really must respond to Mrs Bignell’s latest comment that I ‘definitely did’ say that religion should not be taught in schools.

Let me quote from my original letter which I have in front of me. ‘I agree that religious education is vital’. I can’t be much plainer than that.

What I did say was that religious instruction should not go on in schools.

After all, as a schoolteacher I taught RE for many years in a totally objective and unbiased manner. I took my pupils on visits to churches, Hindu temples etc etc.

In many ways I don’t think that Mrs Bignell and I are so far apart in our views, although she is a Christian and I am not.

We are almost of the same generation too.

We clearly both feel that children should be taught about religion but my point is that they should not be preached at before they are old enough to realise the implications of accepting a particular belief as ‘The Truth’.

RICHARD COOK, Southampton.