Madam, - Mary Raftery (Opinion, August 10th) apparently believes that teachers and publishers are colluding to "fleece" parents, making them spend more than they would like on schoolbooks.
To avoid this "rip-off" she proposes that some central authority organise a group of teachers to produce and circulate mandated textbooks for each syllabus, a distinctly dirigiste idea. (And while this is going on, the uniform is to be standardised too!)
In practice the Department of Education believes that one writer is certainly not just the same as another, that consequently the difference between one book or another is important to teachers and furthermore that publishers and booksellers have skills worth paying for which cannot easily be replaced by a panel of teachers and schoolchildren in their spare time. - Yours, etc,
TONY FARMER,
President,
Clé - the Irish Book Publishers' Association,
Denzille Lane,
Dublin 2.