am sorry that Mr. Brand has evidently failed to benefit
from his broad background, for I fear that the attitude he expresses in his article in the Spectator of March 31 jeopardises rather than aids the 'Teacher's Lot.'
I am a registered medical practitioner, but since circumstances at present prevent me from follow- ing my profession I have been working in a kinder- garten school. I can assure him that it is very far from a 'nine-till-half-past-three-then-home-to-the- telly' sort of life, although that is a common mis- conception among many people outside the teaching profession. Children under seven years of age can be both tiring and exacting en masse, and has Mr. Brand failed to realise that it is the first seven years of a child's life which are the most formative?
Would he really prefer to sell ice-cream in the streets than teach just for the benefit of a 'large car' and a holiday in Spain? At one hospital where I worked the cook owned the latest Vauxhall Cresta while I. much to the amusement of everyone, rode my red, hand-painted bicycle (war-time model), but not for anything would I have changed my job for his or the increase in salary.
Surely he is not unaware, too, of the small nucleus of people in Britain who arc still prepared to pay for their children's education, as distinct from those who, able to afford it, prefer not to? Neither my friends nor I arc 'ex-grammar' school though we may be doing very nicely, thank you!
I would really be most grateful to him, too, if he could explain to me the difference in the outcome whether Jones, B., Davies, W., and Susan White do not get taught because the teachers are on strike or the children do not go to school.
Incidentally, my husband is also a doctor and if people do not think well of my going out to work then why do they call him or send their children to the school I run? I am sorry if he knows of no others for I can assure him there arc plenty.
Perhaps a little philosophy might help Mr. Brand as well as the pay rise which I would be the last to deny teachers both need and deserve.—Yours faithfully,
WENA WILLIAMS
Gasthaus Lange, Ruchhausweg, Munster, Germany
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