IN response to Mr. Alex James’ sincere but sentimental assertion that ‘we have to respect and listen to children’s voices more’, I can only enquire: why should society defer to the views of those who are its lesser educated, least experienced and most impressionable members?

In my estimation, the opinions of most juveniles regarding world affairs are ill-informed, platitudinous and uncritical of conventional progressivist wisdom. Young people are entitled to be concerned about the global megacrisis but not to absent themselves from their academic studies.

Environmentally-friendly hiring requites uncommon virtue and self-abnegation, and there qualities are best inculcated through a formal, vigorous ‘education for asceticism’. The Green Party, with its regrettable espousal of anti-intellectual, permissive and student-centred education only exacerbates the problems its professor to to seek to rectify.

Zeal without knowledge and sincerity without intelligence are perilous.

Paul Marshal Thompson

Maybush, Southampton