Sir, Imparting the preceding direct object agreement rule in French and convincing the class that it is “the most exciting fact of the day” may imply the greatness of a teacher (letter, July 1), but surely giving pupils the ability to juxtapose in the same sentence this rule with the second person plural conjugation of the imperfect subjunctive of the transitive verb assassiner (. . . que vous assassinassiez), as well as getting a pupil to expound such grammatical terminology, constitutes the truly great teacher? After all, as Pascal stated, Penser fait la grandeur de l’homme.
Rob Knell
Head of French, Kimbolton School, Cambs