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PHILIP Sandland (Sentinel Letters, December 9) believes that wealth is a sign of intelligence and that Karl Marx claimed everyone is equal.

Wealth is just as likely to accompany a dim, egocentric, ruthless and exploitative personality. I do not know of many millionaire Nobel Prize winners but there are numerous sons of Third World politicians and military dictators, with dubiously sourced wealth, who have studied at an English public school.

For example, a disproportionate number of ex-public schoolboys occupy the best-paid jobs in the City and judiciary.

This is unlikely to be because they are especially bright but because their parents were rich and able to afford the intense tuition and social contacts that are not available to their poorer contemporaries.

In turn their children will benefit from having wealthy parents and the wealth gap, that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has recently reported to have hampered the growth of the UK economy, is perpetuated.

The grammar school system, which Mr Sandland advocates, is only a little better.

It benefits the children of middle-class parents who are able to provide books and the encouragement that the poorer parents of equally talented children who have to work all the hours God sends to survive cannot provide.

The children of poorer parents are definitely disadvantaged. I do not know the answer to this but I am sure Mr Sandland is wrong to blame their unintelligent parents. Human eugenics was discredited many years ago.

ALEX SHAW

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The Sentinel published 'Wealth is not a sign of intelligence'