Q Do you feel at risk from chronic fatigue syndrome? It was reported in City on Friday that a University of Hong Kong study had suggested engineers were the most likely victims of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), quoting a doctor, Yue Yan-mun, as saying engineers suffered more physical and mental stress than other professions. The report added that the study was conducted last year, when we know that unemployment, which is stressful, in construction engineering was the highest in Hong Kong and those remaining in employment were overworking to hold jobs. Dr Yue was no doubt referring to the well-known common cause of the symptoms associated with CFS, namely constriction of the vertebral arteries in the neck, which feed blood to the subconscious brain. This can be caused by physical shock to the neck or by stress tightening the neck muscles. If the government would ease its unnecessary pressure on construction engineers, the result of the next survey might be quite different. Ken Bridgewater, New Territories I agree that teachers are at high risk of suffering from CFS. I am a teacher and fully experience this phenomenon. I think the problem has been caused by a kind of stupidity in school management that focuses on doing more instead of thinking more. Initiatives which shouldn't have priority have been launched with directives that they must be treated as important and urgent, leaving little room for teachers to break away from a heavy workload. The cause of the problem is that top management is run by people who only have a heart to work for their own interests and don't have a heart to work for education. The promotion system encourages that to happen. Name and address supplied Q Should more resources be put into primary schools' language programmes? I understand the government is trying hard to find a fix to the problem. I do not think this fix is a good one at all because the money is going into the wrong place. It is like filling up holes in the ground. We must start with teaching good English from an early age. I am sure many early childhood English teachers would agree with this. I believe language, and probably art, are among the few skills that must be mastered at a very early age. Chances are high that negative effects (heavy accent, inability to think in the language) starts to pile up when you start late. Consequently, I think there should be more resources made available to kindergartens and primary schools in addition to the secondary schools. I work in a university and it is really embarrassing to tell you that almost all the students I have met cannot write a decent e-mail asking about problems they face in their studies. Deep Batra, Kowloon Tong Q Are the standards of English language teachers cause for concern? If people still remember the reasons Hong Kong was given nine years of compulsory education and why, overnight, two universities were increased to eight, one should not have been so surprised at the level of our English teachers. The government never intended education for all when nine years of education was made free. In the past, children were not protected by a law outlawing them working. Then the law that says children under 15 are not allowed to work came in. It caused a lot of trouble by leaving children to run wild on the streets. The school was the best place to keep this population unfit for the labour market. That was the real function of the school - to be a playground or a prison for this big number of the workforce being made redundant. The government added a few school places, opened a few more posts and went on doing what it used to do. If you cannot make it, bad luck! You can imagine how teachers had to struggle with this new breed of children because no new and easier curriculum was written for them and the existing one did not cater to this mass, mostly from the grass roots. We had an elite education system then. We still do. As a lot of new teachers had to be recruited to teach children who were not prepared or willing to suffer the heavy school workload, the government could only make do with second-rate job seekers. And who became teachers? Those who could not make it to the choicest professions. Name and address supplied On other matters ... Your correspondent (D. F. Urrows, Friday) complains about having to queue to post a parcel. Well, he may be surprised to hear that, with many people wishing to send parcels to other countries before Christmas, there is likely to be a long queue in almost every post office in the world at this time of the year, not just in Hong Kong. In fact, our postal service is second to none. For example, I just received, on a Monday in Hong Kong, a letter posted on Friday afternoon in London. That is not an unusual occurrence. How much more efficient does it need to become to please your correspondent? Let us be grateful that Hong Kong enjoys one of the most reliable and efficient postal services on the planet. In this exceptionally busy period, let us thank the postal service employees here, who make it all work so well for us. Paul Surtees, Mid-Levels