Follow Opportunities, Not Dreams

I'm up early chasing through UK documents on their worrying lack of digital skills.  A typical UK worker falls behind many other country's workers in basic IT skills, and I suspect the same is true of many Western countries.  When the digital economy is one of the few bright spots, Western students seem to be turning away from it (unless it's video game design, everyone wants to be a video game designer - as long as it means playing video games and not actually learning how to code).

We can't fill jobs in computer related fields, but less and less students are considering the pathway.

One of the prime movers in this shift away from viable employment follows an idea on bad advice I saw from a tech teacher at our school:

"Just because you're passionate about something doesn't mean you won't suck at it."

As a general rule, parents and students are guided in school to do what makes them happy.  We fill up courses playing hockey, taking photos and give out credits for things kids are doing at home anyway.  It makes for shiny, happy, low stressed students and a great graduation rate, but none of it is really preparing students for the workplace.

We are frequently updated with the number of students from our school who have been accepted to university (only university, the rest don't matter).  We never see any stats on how many of them finish the degrees they were accepted for.  I suspect that stat isn't very flattering.  An even less flattering stat would be an income check at the age of thirty.  I wonder what the employment prospects for those university bound students are.  What is their quality of life trying to pay off debts larger than they've ever been in history?  Yet that's where all our 'good' students are directed.

I dropped out of high school and became a millwright because I had smart hands and the apprenticeship fell into my lap.  When I didn't feel like that was intellectually stressful enough I tackled university and then chased the opportunities that arose from it.  I didn't become a teacher because it was some kind of magical calling, I became a teacher because I was chasing opportunities.

Much of the advice students get in school are from life-long academics.  People who went to school, attended university, and then immediately became employed for life at school again (sometimes the same school they graduated from!)  These people with their carefully proscribed lives don't experience the world the way the rest of us do.  When I see them telling students to 'do what makes you happy' and 'follow your dreams!', I cringe.

My son has recently been wondering about getting a job so he can manage his own money, he's eleven.  I told him, 'do you know why they call it work?'  He looked at me for a moment and then said, 'because it isn't for fun?'  Out of the mouths of babes.  I only wish school guidance would realize that basic truth.

You can derive a great deal of satisfaction out of your work without it being some kind of romantic calling.  Few people live the lives of celebrities, playing a game or making art and wallowing in the money derived from it.  Insinuating that kids could be that person is dishonest at worst and deceiving at best, but how would you know if you've never had to struggle for work?  We can all find satisfying and challenging work if we push ourselves and chase opportunity.  Train yourself to better chase opportunity and you'll find your circumstances will continue to change and improve.  One day you might find yourself in a well paid, challenging profession that you'd never have predicted for yourself.

Or, you know, maybe making a living...

Quinn Norton gives the blather some context.  Hobbies are for fun, your career
is probably not your hobby, and that's fine, it's how the world works.

I Just Wish They Could Finish A Thought

At the ICT conference I attended yesterday we did an industry panel discussion.  The thirty year old VP of  a major printer company passionately responded to a teacher question: "What can we do to prepare students for the workplace."

"I just wish they could finish a thought!  They can't close sales, they can't even perform basic customer service.  They get halfway through a sales pitch and forget what they're talking about, and they don't listen!  If a customer is telling them a problem, they respond by ignoring what the customer has just said.  If grads could just finish what they started, we could take care of the rest."

I've seldom heard the distracted digital native described in such (frustrated) clear terms.  If business can't use them because they can't actually finish anything, then this puts older people at a distinct advantage.

Another of the panel told the story of a friend's son who did an IT contract for him.  He started off great, but once the big install was done and he was in beta testing the system, he seemed to slack off.  About halfway through the contract he noticed the twenty something was on Facebook, so he made an account and befriended the kid.  His stream was full of comments like, "I'm doing nothing and getting paid for it!" and "another day on Facebook on company time."  This manager contacted HR, revised his contract (which still had over a month in it) and ended it two days later, that Friday.

That guy's inability to think through (complete a thought) about what he was doing (broadcasting his laziness), led to him being unemployed.  There is a direct correlation there that any thinking person would understand, why don't these digital natives?  Because they don't finish a thought.  Even cause and effect are magical happenings beyond their understanding.

This question came up again later from a senior federal government manager who couldn't understand how fractured the thinking of recent Ontario graduates appears to be.  I suggested that Mcguinty's in-school-till-18 program has resulted in a system wide lowering of expectations.  Rubrics start at level 1.  The implication there is that you pass if you do anything, anything at all.

Failing students has become almost impossible with student success and administration jumping in to offer alternatives (usually taught by teachers with no background in the subject).  A great example is a failed grade 11 English student who was taking our credit recovery program.  She got a B+ on her ISU paper, it had two grammar mistakes in the title alone and was marked by someone with no English background.  I had to wonder how much of it had been cut and pasted, but that wasn't looked into either.

The example that federal government manager gave was of a student who had missed dozens of classes at a community college and hadn't completed any work.  His argument?  "Can't you just pass me?" He was confused when the college prof said no, his high school teachers had.

Apparently we're graduating students who can't complete a thought and have systematized secondary education to minimize (if not remove entirely) cause and effect.  I wonder how long it takes before we see persistent and ongoing economic problems related to this.  That young VP's passionate plea for graduates who can finish a thought might just be the tip of the iceberg.