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This paper considers some of the findings of a survey of students preparing to teach in primary schools. It attempts to show some of the strains between the general economic attitudes and views of teaching as an occupation as expressed by these future teachers, and the public rhetoric used to justify certain recent changes in educational organisation and management. The student teachers were not economically naive, nor were their attitudes anti-industrial in any general sense, but their vision of teaching as a caring occupation did place them at odds with some contemporary changes in the curriculum and school organisation. They accepted the general importance of developing children's economic and industrial understanding, but they were very selective about the type of work which could be carried out with younger children. Many supported the ethic of enterprise, but their interpretation of it related to a very individualistic and autonomous conception of the role of the teacher.