ACCORDING to “High art: bald men with cellos” (TES, December 17) the National Foundation for Educational Research draws conclusions regarding “high art” and the attitudes of young people, based on questions to 20 teenagers.
While accepting that the opinions stated are those of the 20 young people, we would like to suggest that the sample is too small for the conclusions to be of value.
This letter is written jointly by nearly 200 young people of widely differing backgrounds who happen nonetheless to have an interest in classical music, popular music and many other at forms. Some of us are even cellists, some are male and none of us is bald!
We hope that, far from making “depressing, if predictable, reading” for arts professionals and educationists alike, the Gulbenkian Foundation and Arts Council will take no notice whatsoever of this report until they have a much larger and much more representative set of views.
167 members of the
Oxfordshire County Youth Orchestra and the Oxfordshire Schools Senior Orchestra
Education department
County music service
Oxford School
Glanville Road
Oxford
