This is in response to the editorial of February 6, 2009, endorsing performance-based pay for teachers.

While ostensibly a good notion that teachers pay should be based on positive outcomes in the classroom, what if the problem is not the teachers? What if the problem is with our children?

Unfortunately, not everyone in our world is capable of learning. Can that be the teacher's fault?

I wonder how many of the advocates of performance-based pay have ever endured the experience of trying to teach those who cannot learn.

Inability to learn

I have been trying to teach our young people how to drive for a long time. If my pay was based on my results, I would be penniless by now. You could not teach some of these idiots how to drive.

Just look at highway accident statistics: 330 dead last year, a 10 per cent increase over 2007, and more than 14,000 seriously injured and requiring hospitalisation. And with our population increasing, we can expect these statistics to worsen.

The real problem is - and always has been - the inability of the masses to learn anything! We have a handful of smart people in our country and everyone else is just holding our country back. The solution is not to penalise the teachers but to figure out how to improve our nation's gene pool!

I am, etc.,

MICHAEL DUBERSON