Michael Gove is stuck in a time warp (¡°Enemy of promise¡±, 13?June). Twenty-five years ago, the radical Right was publishing similar scare stories about Marxists in teacher education.

Margaret Thatcher, in The Downing Street Years, recalled how in 1988 she ¡°could barely believe the contents of one of the BEd courses¡± at what was then known as Brighton Polytechnic. She was not referring to Marxism but to a course I taught that included considerations of gender and ¡°race¡±, issues that are now mainstream and enshrined in British law.

Can we hope, in light of the obvious failings of the capitalist system, that 25 years hence a serious consideration of Marxism (not Stalinism, but 21st-century democratic socialism) will be on the mainstream agenda, too?

Mike Cole
Professor in education
University of East London

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Martin McQuillan has a real go at Michael Gove, who has claimed that ¡°academics who have helped run the university departments of education responsible for developing curricula and teacher training courses¡± are ¡°Marxists¡±.

But surely if they really were Marxists, we would by now have an educational system based on the scientific rigours of dialectical and historical materialism, and from which a new elite ruling class would have arisen.

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R.?E. Rawles
Honorary research fellow in psychology
University College London

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Much as I applaud the sentiments in the open letters to Gove from school of education lecturers, I¡¯m afraid that writing letters to the education secretary is not enough. Indeed, a history of the activities of those in Gove¡¯s own department suggests that personal emails and Twitter are the preferred means of communication.

Keith Flett
London