I WOULD like to give a perhaps overlooked viewpoint in this debate about disruptive pupils. We've had opinions from teachers, their unions, politicians, civil servants, and other interested parties. I'd like to give the view of a pupil - one of the people whom this is going to affect directly.

I am lucky enough to be quite intelligent, and am therefore willing to learn. But I have been in classes that were consistently held up by disruptive pupils who did not want to learn. The small minority tried their utmost to prevent the rest of the class from learning and were often very effective. The most that the teacher could do was send them out of the class and this entailed masses of bureaucracy, making the teacher less than willing to do it. Calling in senior staff did little to help - they could do little more than give the malefactors a stern ticking off and perhaps detention, although that made more paperwork for them.

After we moved into our Standard Grade classes I left a lot of this behind - we were streamed in most subjects - but I have no doubt the disruption carries on in the lower classes with the teachers just as impotent. The more worrying thing is that the effect of the unwilling pupils was still felt. They portrayed learning as ''un-cool''. Those who regularly gave answers in class were branded as ''teacher's pets''.

In my experience someone is just as likely to be bullied or picked on because they are in the top maths class as they are for being ''stupid''. Now, even in top classes, it is seen as an embarrassing thing to put your hand up and volunteer answers, or to show any sign of cleverness. We have let things slip too far and we will be faced with a long, hard struggle to get being clever a desirable thing to be.

If we are to stand any chance of giving a quality education to those who want it, without fear of humiliation, bullying, or worse, we must take a hard stance against disruption. It should be made as easy as possible for teachers to remove pupils from their classes and they should be encouraged to do so if the pupil is disruptive - they have shown they do not want to learn and they should therefore be removed so that the rest of the class, who do want to learn, can get on with it. Streaming should also be introduced right from first year, not just on academic ability, but also on the effort given to work.

Rewards should be given to those who do behave, not those who don't - people on ''behaviour support'' often get to go on outings and trips to places like theme parks. This seems to be rewarding them for poor behaviour, while those who stick in and work hard get very little.

Scott Wilson,

fourth-year pupil, Lochend, Beith.

ALTHOUGH it is 41 years since I left school, I wonder how many teachers contribute to disruptive behaviour in the classroom through attitude and style of teaching. Are they encouraging pupils to succeed, or are they conveying the message of ''failure''? One teacher frequently referred to his students as ''poor benighted specimens'' while another said of me that I had ''no intellect''. As he absented himself from the classroom when I was due to be taught, he could not possibly know whether I had an ''intellect'' or not, and I left school a ''failure''.

I remember feeling so frustrated that, not only was I suicidal, but I felt that I could have vandalised the school. Fortunately a GP provided medication which prevented both from happening.

Parents, too, must take their share of responsibility. Mine made their disapp-ointment in me clear as I had not passed the entrance exam for a top fee-paying school and, when I complained about the poor-quality service that the local state school was providing, I was told: ''What can you expect, you're not a Hutchesons' girl''. Thus failure was not only reinforced, but expected, and my frustration was enhanced.

If my experience is anything to go by, disruptive behaviour is likely to be caused by frustration. Surely something must be done to prevent those whom your correspondent John W Elliott describes as being ''the mad, the sad, and the bad'' from becoming mad, sad, and bad in the first place. Does not the whole of society have a role to play in this? We ignore the problems of children and young people at our peril.

Margaret M H Lyth,

26 Gardenside Street, Uddingston.