I have been astonished to read recent claims about the potential damage that day care nurseries may do to British children and society. Children in France have been attending such schools (previously from the age of three and now from two upwards) at least since the end of the Second Word War.
Three generations of French children have passed throughnursery schools and, to my knowledge, this has not produced three generations of behavioural dysfunction.
One only needs to look across the Channel or to somewhere such as Finland for evidence that day nurseries are not as harmful as some wish them to be.
They are expensive, I concede, but this is an entirely different issue.
CECILE DEER Department of educational studies, Oxford University
