The reading public of this country should take their hats off to the Patriotic Royal Old Boys’ Establishment (PROBE) for their wonderful letter to the editor, titled “Shame, Shame, Shame!”, which appeared in The Sunday Times of July 6.

I am not a Royalist, but I admire the courage of the authors of this letter who brought this matter [of a politician putting pressure on a school principal for penalising the politician’s son for serious misconduct] into the limelight. Our politicians should not assume that all people in this country are prepared to put up with this type of behaviour.

Such politicians only bring discredit to schools that produced a generation of great men who steered this country towards prosperity. Discipline, like charity, begins at home. This is the reason parents of the past pulled the ears of their children when they behaved badly. But alas, times have changed. These days parents pull the ears of teachers who penalise their children for wrong-doing.

One is reminded of a line of dialogue spoken in a Sinhala film that starred the late Gamini Fonseka. The line went like this: “The policeman minus his uniform is like a banana that has been peeled – even crows will peck at it.” This truism also holds good for politicians in power.

Congratulations again to the writers of the letter. That is truly right royal civic spirit in action.