It was with incredible dismay that I read your piece “Teaching: a vocation or a ‘congenial’ job” (5 July). Unfortunately, Tony Little seems to disregard the fact that young people choose teaching as a career. It is opinions like these, from people in positions such as his, that continue to discourage young people and the public from seeing teaching as a respectable profession. The idea that young people may have too little life experience to choose teaching is outrageous, especially considering that Mr Little is the head master of Eton College, a school that relishes the amount of life experience it gives to its students.
We all have different levels of experience and we all make choices about the careers we would like to follow at different stages. We should not judge someone’s desire to choose a particular path at an early age, especially as the world is filled with examples of people who have made a choice very early on and are extremely successful. It is unfortunate that Mr Little had to wander about before “drifting” into teaching. The point here is that age and experience are not a proxy for how well one can do a job and whether we make a judgement on what each one of us thinks is our vocation. These archaic views impoverish the spirit of young people who are routinely discouraged by parents and others from following their passion, be it in teaching or elsewhere
Roussel ‘Capra’ De Carvalho, Senior lecturer in education and science PGCE course leader, London Metropolitan University.