Michael Rosen’s praise of Miss Pope’s biology lessons (Miss Pope, my science teacher, would have approved of music and ice lollies in class. Exams aren’t the only way to learn, 23 August) reminded me of her offbeat teaching methods. To demonstrate respiration, Miss Pope brought into class some pigs’ lungs. She inflated them on a water bath to show that they went pink and floated. Holding the trachea up, she declared: “It looks like a swan!” Her lessons inspired me to take biology to A-level and go on to medical school.
Dr Tony Hirst
Darwen, Lancashire
• I, as a longtime teacher and teacher trainer, and the Confucian scholar Xunzi would agree with Michael Rosen. Xunzi’s words are often paraphrased as: “What I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. What I do, I understand.”
Gill Reeve
London
