`Si monumentum requiris, circumspice'. Like Sir Christopher Wren, I plan to leave a visible and artistic testament in my wake when I have shuffled off this mortal coil. Consequently, like Queen Victoria, we were not amused at the outcome of the recent in-service day on the visual arts. Truth to be told, I was singularly unimpressed.

The impassioned message emanating from our tutor on the day stated categorically that within the confines of the art class the process is now deemed more important than the product. Bah, humbug! After a quarter of a century of climbing ladders to adorn my classroom walls with aesthetically excellent landscapes, seascapes, portraits, still-lifes, collages, prints, etchings, batiks and a host of masterpieces of other genres, I have no intention of tearing them down and replacing them with half-baked, indecipherable blotches, smudges and daubs.

In my opinion, the enjoyment that my pupils and I garnered from the hundreds of paintings in which we were engaged during the last 30 years is only commensurate with the aesthetic excellence of the finished products. I myself love the adulation of both pupils and colleagues alike when a blackboard drawing, executed with loving care, turns out so stunningly right. I positively glow when the cigire proclaims my classroom to be a veritable Louvre. In truth, I work best in beautiful surroundings and, as a corollary to same, I think my pupils do likewise.

They have beheld with delight the works of Kandinsky, Munch, Caravaggio, Picasso, Degas and Dali long before it was considered fashionable or proper. They have marvelled at the Mona Lisa and shivered at The Scream, thought about The Thinker and prayed for the proposed canonisation of Antonio Gaudi. They have been exposed to tie-and-dye activities from Africa and have painted a millennium mural in our foyer with the help of a local artist. I have trawled art galleries of three continents for prints and reproductions of great paintings, the better to develop their artistic temperaments.

In short, when it comes to art, we are happy campers. So, what need to revise? Let's have more of the same, but strive for perfection.