Let’s sort school discipline by turning the clock back, says Scott Marmion (Letters, March 16). He also says there is no need for computers or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) systems in schools.

So what year would he like to go back to?

How about 1975?

Teaching was ‘Chalk and Talk’, computers had yet to appear in schools and homes and it was legal to punish children at school by hitting them with a cane or tawse. How does fear of pain from a beating help learning?

Virtually all children have a smartphone today and they will live their entire lives in a world managed using computers.

The VLE has its critics but it will go on improving and to suggest that it and computers have no place in education is irresponsible.

As for the cane, it was abolished from schools in Poland in 1783 but took us another 203 years to become equally civilised.

I’m proud to be a Liberal thinking ‘do-gooder’.

Quentin Macdonald,

Church Lane,

Nether Poppleton,

York