Oxford Students Decide Teaching is Cool

Recent statistics have shown one in four Oxonians are becoming teachers, with the profession also the most popular occupation for tab leavers, or whatever they call graduating from Cambridge.

“When we grow up we want to teach geography”

‘Government sources’ informed the Daily Mail that BBC 3’s new Tough Young Teachers TV programme illustrates a growing trend, where ‘high flying graduates’ are entering the nations toughest schools. While one should take ‘government sources’ and ‘the Daily Mail’ with a pinch of salt, teaching does seem to be as popular with those in their early twenties as Bridge Thursdays are with us.

Michael Gove, the education secretary, said that there is no doubt the current generation of young teachers is the best, but then he would say that, he went to LMH Oxford and is involved in education.

Oxford, home of pedagogy, because teaching isn’t a big enough word

Interrupting a scintillating conversation between two Christchurch freshers about the relative merits of EAT coffee compared to Starbucks, I enquired as to their opinion on this news and teaching in general.

One informed me that teachers could be cool if they taught in secondary schools, but that ‘primary school teachers are lame’. Seeking to avoid crass generalisations for the sake of journalism, I asked the opinion of the other who got no further than ‘my aunt’s a teacher’. Obviously a divisive issue then.

A Merton student got quite excited when I asked him his opinion. Ignoring the question of what he thought of the profession in general and the trends seen in graduate occupations, he chose instead to embark on a protracted speech about how he hated it when teachers tried to be emotionally aware, but that sounds like Merton all over really.

So Oxford students, if you’re thinking of becoming a teacher, you aren’t the only one. Just make sure you don’t teach primary school kids, because that’s ‘lame’, and no one likes a loser.