I NOTE with interest your coverage of the Milburn report ("Milburn in living wage call as child poverty rises in Scotland", The Herald, October 21, and Letters, October 22).

The son of a manual labourer who for years during and after the Second World War did 12-hour shifts shovelling coal into the furnaces of our gasworks, the greatest obstacle to my growth was the assumption, widespread among adults, teachers and pupils, that I would never be capable of anything better. Thus, though at the top of the primary school, I was at first put into the lowest stream in the secondary on the assumption that I would, like everyone else in my family, leave school at 14, saved mainly by the perception of the head of the secondary. A Labour government three years later changed my life by making a relatively small sum available for people like me to continue at school.

As a teacher, I tried to promote the idea that everyone, no matter who, was capable of great excellence and I was never so happy as when someone from the bottom of the social pile distinguished himself, as some did.

I suggest that this is the single most important obstacle to the advancement of the poor even today. Too many are brought up to believe that they are powerless to rise from the pit assigned to them by circumstances.

There is even, I suggest, a trait among Scots that resents efforts and excellence. The judgment "it's not bad" applied reluctantly to almost anything good is a sign of this. The poor are disenfranchised from their potential by the mediocrity expected by those around them. We need to change this; become more like the Americans for whom everything is possible. Anyone can become President, a millionaire, a professor, a star of some kind; at least able to make a useful contribution to society which is fulfilling for themselves.

How do you set about this? Fill our schools with enthusiastic teachers who believe it and will promote it.

William Scott,

23 Argyle Place, Rothesay.