Youngsters need design skills to help in later life

James Dyson is absolutely right to criticise the Government’s green paper proposing to drop design and technology as a compulsory subject for 14to 19-year-olds (Vox Pop, DW 30 May).

Giving teenagers the opportunity to experiment and create spatially gives so much confidence.

My art education from the age of 14 to 18 was a very traditional 2D one. But I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to muck about in my dad’s workshop and therefore make my own ideas happen.

You gain so much material and spatial awareness, not to mention confidence, through the experience and it is this confidence in your ideas that can be applied to other areas of your life (not just within design). I studied engineering and then design and the practical experiences, confidence and desire to experiment I gained have been invaluable to my design work.

Katherine Gough

Research associate

Helen Hamlyn Research Centre

London SW7