It seems ironic to me – and reason for concern – that parents who have nurtured the creative and expressive nature of a child would still be frightened when the child says: I want to be a…. (dancer, an actor, a painter, a musician, etc fill in the blank with some artistic occupation here).
Despite all evidence to the contrary, there is still a prevailing belief that the best way to prepare your child for life is to put the fear of god into them that they must choose an academic stream robust enough to put them on track for a university education and that is the best way to a good life.
Of course there is truth in this, as there is in all good lies, but rarely have I seen any attention paid to the dark side of this paradigm: the harm done by this narrowing of options, of definitions of ‘success’. Does scaring your child ‘straight’ actually achieve the goal of better life preparation?
I believe, as many do, that we are all born innately creative and ready to innovate. That talent and ability varies, but the process of creating is what keeps us positive and gives us hope in the face of danger, discouragement and unexpected change. It is what makes us flexible.
We love to latch on to little homilies like “everyone will need to change careers five to eight times in their lifetime” and then expect what follows to be the appropriate advice to cope with this change. Even those of us who passed through the sixties fairly intact no longer seem to question the status quo when faced with career planning experts and our own children. We are pretty certain that experts should know more than we do, what will best prepare our child for the world of work – what skills they will need to become productive members of society.
We know that our own career path was a tough one, and perhaps not as successful as we hoped. We may live with regrets about advice not taken. Not only does this experience take us right back to high school, it also plays to our own insecurities. What if we are wrong and they are right? People study this stuff all the time, so they should know better than me what a student should do to prepare for life beyond the education system. And mostly the target is to prepare each child for a university education.
Now, I don’t dispute that all young people should prepare for the option of attending post-secondary institutions of learning. Being a life-long learner is essential, and having options is better
than overcoming the lack of options later in life. But this ‘medical model’ approach to career and personal planning can be at the root of failures and difficulties later in life, when inevitable change happens and the person is in transition yet again. It comes as a surprise or one is prepared for it, but it happens nonetheless. I believe there are many ways – overtly and subtly – that the framework in which we deliver the message contradicts the message. This creates confusion and can have dire consequences for very creative and unconventional people.
Let’s examine this paradigm: the industrial training model of teaching and learning. It is what makes us so convinced that someone with more specialized education than us is better equipped to tell us what is needed to succeed in life and work than parents and teens. People who have largely been in school for years, without much experience of the new world of work, where everyone’s inner entrepreneur must be called into play.
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