Careers at school

[Placid Dingo]

I picked my career on more or less a whim; I didn't have any strong feelings about anything in particular, and just went for education because it more or less felt like the thing to do. I was lucky in the way I essentially fell into something that I live and breath passion for.

We see careers discussed in schools. Often there'll be offers of trial days in senior years. Perhaps a class will be asked to take the Myers-Briggs or some other kind of test to categorise them and suggest the kinds of areas they'd be inclined towards. I remember looking through books of different career choices in grade 10, without being exactly wowed by any of the prospects.

The best way to describe the process feels to me to be 'bloodless'. Without passion or fire. Looking at jobs; one of the most significant factors in anyone's life with the cold detachment of shopping for insurance or a superannuation plan.

The film Trainspotting has a famous speech; 'Choose a job, choose a car', presenting a series of inane options, where any answer was the right one, provided you were correctly indoctrinated into the system.

Indoctrination is not the intention of education, or of teachers. For all the rhetoric of the 'school brainwashing' type arguments, there is really nothing more sinister in schools than teachers simply trying to provide the right opportunities for students.

Why do we see this sense of defeatism then in regard to moving towards a job? Perhaps we don't promote the idea that we're not pushing you towards a career, or a pathway, or a job, but a life. A fulfilling, passion filled life.
My job is the best job in the world, for me at least. I have weekends free, cheap accommodation, great holidays and I'm paid to chase my various passions. In school, I would never have expected to get so much out of what is, essentially, a 'mainstream' role; and a government one at that! 

Ken Robinson's book, 'The Element' makes a persuasive argument towards ensuring the fundamental role of schooling is to help students develop awareness of their passions. Schools talk of careers and jobs and work, but not so much of desire, passion and hunger. Maybe it's time we did.

[Cramulus]

I want to echo the sentiments in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

The video is a fascinating lecture about educational paradigms, which has been set to some animation to make it less stuffy. :P

tl;dw version: One of the reasons that people feel so jaded by the system is that it doesn't do what it's intended to do anymore. Our current educational paradigms were created for a society focused on industrialization. We based schools around the factory model (intentionally!), a lot like an assembly line.

The model used to be:

Good grades -> Good college -> Good job that you can stay at until you retire


BUT

that's not how it works anymore. People see the flaws in this system and they don't want any part in it. And they're right! The way that american business works right now is incredibly frustrating.

THESE DAYS

companies are structured to expand and shrink with the economy. My boss explains it like this: The sad task for us educational publishers in the 21st century is to prepare kids for a lifetime of getting laid off when the bubble pops. We need to be giving them skills they can use in ANY industry, instead of encouraging them to specialize in a single branch of academia.



The educational publishing world is being rocked right now by two things: (1) we need a new educational paradigm to prepare kids for the job market in the 21st century  (2) digital books & social marketing, which is its own kettle of fish.


There are a number of private educational research groups who are trying to invent the new paradigm. Our company has embraced this one skill set which we feel will gain popularity over the coming years. Part of what it entails is giving kids skills that they can use anywhere. Like the ability to turn a conversation into a diagram. The other characteristic is an emphasis on "application" questions. Those are questions which focus on applying skills you've just learned to the real world. For example, you might have just completed a math unit on, I dunno, let's say the concept of percent. And the questions in this unit would include a few straight-up math problems involving percent, but more emphasis would be placed on using percent in real world situations, like calculating tax and tips.

[Cain]

We never had a career discussion that I could recall.

I remember taking a bunch of tests which suggested what degrees I should look into, and what these degrees could lead to jobs in, but actual jobs themselves were never mentioned.

Then again, that was during the heady period of the mid 2000s, when you could pretty much walk into any low level job over here, no questions asked.

[Cramulus]

Indoctrination is not the intention of education, or of teachers. For all the rhetoric of the 'school brainwashing' type arguments, there is really nothing more sinister in schools than teachers simply trying to provide the right opportunities for students.

I also want to comment on this---

Sociologists who study education are fiercely divided on the role of the "diploma" or "degree".

----One camp argues that it represents a skill set useful for employers.

----The other camp argues that you actually learn your job skills on the job, and that the point of the diploma/degree is that it represents your socialization to the needs of the workplace.

Though not a sociologist, I am in the second camp.

In college I studied experimental psychology. My first job out of college was performing clinical drug research on Alzheimer's medication. My degree was actually really well suited for that.

The person they hired after me was hmmm... how to put this .... a little bit dull. She didn't have a psych background; she actually had a Masters degree in anthropology. She didn't know anything about psychometric evaluation, data collection, statistics, experimental psych in general. Based purely on her degree, she made $10K more than me per year, which works out to about $5 per hour.  Essentially, she made more money  because she was socialized to a "higher level of performance" than is expected of people at the bachelor level. Even though she didn't have ANY job skills.


So while teachers aren't individually focused on turning out docile little factory cogs,
it is part of the design goal of the industrial process of education. The goal of high school is not to teach kids algebra and chemistry 101 - when do you use that shit, anyway? - it's to produce somebody that is disciplined enough to do whatever their boss wants. Basically, if you can write a five page paper on total bullshit for no reason at all, you do have the skills you need in the modern workplace. 

[Placid Dingo]

The system itself is frustratingly industrial. And that vid is of a speech by Ken Robinson who I mentioned in the OP. I strongly recommend 'The Element'.

The goal of high school is not to teach kids algebra and chemistry 101 - when do you use that shit, anyway? - it's to produce somebody that is disciplined enough to do whatever their boss wants. Basically, if you can write a five page paper on total bullshit for no reason at all, you do have the skills you need in the modern workplace. 

Half agree... I think this is where a number of teachers are, but something most want to avoid, though struggle with doing so in the present system.

Also, realistically being adaptive and identifying and expanding areas of passion is the more important skill now.