Letters | 18 December 2010

Too stern a test

Sir: I commend Oliver Lewis for his well-made points about the lack of rigour in British examinations in comparison to those of the Chinese (‘The Gaokao challenge’, 11 December). We need to up our game. The Gaokao exam is not beyond rebuke, however.

The extremely high level of academic standards in China puts terrible pressure on the nine million students who take the exam. This year, three suicides were reported on the first day of the Gaokao. The fact that such reports emerge every year suggests a balance needs to be struck between improving our academic standards and pushing the students too far.

Sebastian Payne
London SW1

Iran’s Arab enemies

Sir: Charles Moore writes that the WikiLeaks disclosures bear out the neocon belief that, for all their public anger towards Israel, ‘what really worries the Arabs is Iran’ (The Spectator’s Notes, 4 December). Neocons are usually careful to distinguish the ruler from the ruled, but Mr Moore mistakes the fabulously wealthy and unaccountable Arab potentates whose secret wish for a military attack on Iran has now been revealed with the people they govern.

It suffices to trundle around any Arab bazaar to realise that many ordinary people, in spite of their historic enmity for the Persians, regard Ahmadinejad as a Muslim hero, and his defiance of the West as a laudable contrast to the toadying of their own crowned heads. Mr Moore is wrong to think they would applaud military attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities. They would be angry, and now, thanks to Julian Assange, they would know whom to thank.

Christopher de Bellaigue
Tehran