Interesting that we were talking about this very concept yesterday. I once spoke at a career day event held at a disadvantaged high school. My instructions were to talk about my career in health care, but I quickly found that only one student had a ‘variable choice of career’ mindset, only one even had the door open that could lead to something other than repeating what their parents were doing. I did talk about health care, but ended up spending more time talking about the wide world of job choices that could lie ahead for them. They could dream of anything and choose that. However, by the end of the period, I had discovered that the ability to dream of a career choice outside of their experience was too nebulous. They had never encountered the idea that they actually had a choice in their own future. What they needed was what you have suggested here. They need to spend an hour, a day, a week actually experiencing different occupational choices. Count me as 100% in support of school somehow enabling this type of exposure.
Seems to me like that's opening some new vectors for adolescents to be introduced to the world — I'm thinking especially of some students who love YouTube and learn about all kinds of wonderfully random things that way, including various jobs. I don't know as many adolescents personally who watch documentary series, but I'm sure that's happening too. There are also some cool organizations, like Road Trip Nation in the US or Inspire High in Japan, that try to use online platforms to give kids a wide range of real-world exposure. All steps in the right direction, I think...
Interesting that we were talking about this very concept yesterday. I once spoke at a career day event held at a disadvantaged high school. My instructions were to talk about my career in health care, but I quickly found that only one student had a ‘variable choice of career’ mindset, only one even had the door open that could lead to something other than repeating what their parents were doing. I did talk about health care, but ended up spending more time talking about the wide world of job choices that could lie ahead for them. They could dream of anything and choose that. However, by the end of the period, I had discovered that the ability to dream of a career choice outside of their experience was too nebulous. They had never encountered the idea that they actually had a choice in their own future. What they needed was what you have suggested here. They need to spend an hour, a day, a week actually experiencing different occupational choices. Count me as 100% in support of school somehow enabling this type of exposure.
To what extent do you think kids are getting this exposure from social media, and maybe documentary television series?
Seems to me like that's opening some new vectors for adolescents to be introduced to the world — I'm thinking especially of some students who love YouTube and learn about all kinds of wonderfully random things that way, including various jobs. I don't know as many adolescents personally who watch documentary series, but I'm sure that's happening too. There are also some cool organizations, like Road Trip Nation in the US or Inspire High in Japan, that try to use online platforms to give kids a wide range of real-world exposure. All steps in the right direction, I think...
Yes, yes, yes! -- "I think that we need to re-introduce adolescents to the community resources around them."