If the arrogance of Barbara Matthews' view (Herald on Sunday, October 10) was believable, in that a university education provides the ability in "how to think, reason and weigh up issues logically", then New Zealand's current government and its university-educated leader have let down academia. Quite apart from the "Covid Chaos", I agree with Kendall Dons, (Herald on Sunday, October 10) in that Hosking should be applauded because "he is the only journalist asking the hard questions and not reporting what the Left want them to say". Mike Hosking, I am with you because, according to Barbara Matthews, we "never had the advantage" of university education.
Leonie Wilkinson, Tuakau
I chose not to go to university because there was nothing I could do there that interested me. What I did learn in sixth form history, however, was we had to read every historian's views on a particular event in history and decide for ourselves what was closest to the truth and write why we thought this. At the time our teacher was doing his Masters, so maybe that was part of the reason too — but 70 years on this rotten old Earth we have today, where I read and listen to what is going on out there, does give you the above abilities that do NOT require the services of a university lecturer.
Gill Eggers, Hastings
Kendall Dons (HOS October 10) makes the same mistake other people have made. Just because someone has a newspaper column or a radio show, that doesn't mean they're a journalist. Mike Hosking himself has written in his Herald column that journalists are held to standards that he doesn't want to be. Hosking is not a journalist, he's just opinionated. That's why he writes opinion columns instead of doing journalism. Mistaking him for a journalist disparages the training real journalists have received and the work they actually do.
Morgan L. Owens, Manurewa
Unvaxxed and distracted
There are many reasons NZ's vaccination rate is not as high as desired. One is that many of the unvaccinated are too busy searching for The Donald's stolen election.
Phil Chitty, Albany
