The answer is simple: I want to get up each morning, work, play, relax, laugh, eat good food, love, and go back to sleep each night. I want to be happy. Does that simply not make the cut anymore?
Every GCSE, A level or university advice conversation I have had or overheard with teachers manages to craftily meander its way round to the same old question. You need your defences ready. Yet although they all seem keen enough to ask, and to nod approvingly when the cowering object spurts out plans for dentistry or vetinary science, careers advice in the education system today seems haphazard.
Far from being based on enjoyment or genuine interest, advice is often geared towards chances of passing entrance exams, suitability, contacts or perhaps worst of all, family tradition. The result is that young people often find themselves working towards a certain career path, undergoing gruelling work experience and endless cramming only to one day wonder why they ever chose that route in the first place.
I know many people whose career and university decisions are based upon chance opportunities, romanticism, impressions drawn from the media, a vague sense of obligation or a skill in a certain subject, rather than a genuine desire to become the next neurosurgeon. A few years ago my siblings and I could have been described by a cynical observer as 1) a potential journalist who refused to read current affairs, 2) a would-be lawyer with an aversion to rules and 3) a disorganised and antiauthoritarian budding fighter pilot who hated early mornings. For us it has turned out just fine; we now respectively read the papers, have a strong sense of justice, and do a paper round, but things could easily have been different. It is, surely, the job of teachers in charge of future choices to ensure that pupils choose the courses and subjects they do for the right reasons?
I know from firsthand experience how easy it is to go into denial about a wrong choice, and to not do anything about it because it seems both too late to change and a shame to waste all the hard work. A few years down the line, perhaps mid-degree or whilst job-hunting, it truly is too late to change your A Levels, and so perhaps better advice is needed not only from the outset, but midcourse if things really don’t go as planned.
However, careers advice has a far greater role than simply guiding those with a wide range of options but who are lacking in ambition; it is not only for the privileged. According to the Department for Education, post-16 advice comes “hand-in-hand with a focus on raising aspirations, broadening horizons and increasing social mobility”. It seems, therefore, that the government accepts that talented but economically disadvantaged young people are often dependant on inspiring and enthusiastic guidance from their schools to achieve their full potential. Yet paradoxically the same report states that no school or college is “required to engage with any one particular curriculum” in the field of career’s advice, meaning that there is no specific guidance or funding available to schools wishing to provide futures advice. Understandably, many schools in underprivileged areas opt to focus on core English, Maths and Science to increase students leaving with the essential 5 A*-C grades at GCSE, rather than spend valuable resources in inspiring the brighter students to aim for higher education.
So the problem is two-fold: many children never achieve their full potential because the possibility of A-Levels and university is never broached, whilst those lucky enough to take higher education for granted are often guided into an accepted profession instead of being encouraged to consider what they want from their career. Key points, such as where they would like to live, the hours and effort they are prepared to contribute and the atmosphere in which they will thrive are often overlooked. Meanwhile, the subject of a careers’ flexibility once children come into the picture is given an even wider berth for fear of appearing sexist when advising bright, aspiring girls. The solution, of course, would be the introduction of government funded careers advice counsellors in post-16 centres, yet seeing as we can hardly afford the free school meals programme nowadays, this seems unlikely.
So for now it is down to existing teachers and parents to stress the importance of happiness. Because at the end of the day that’s what we’re all here for, and if becoming an international lawyer helps you achieve it, so be it. If you’d genuinely rather live on a farm in Chile, however, or become a reclusive poet, then I don’t see how wasting sweat, tears and taxes on a degree is going to be useful to anyone, the government included. We should be encouraged to aim for what we truly want, and in a fast paced society of career ladders and age discrimination it is so easy to realise this a little too late.
