My sister - who is the successful one in the family and consequently moves in more elevated circles - has been telling me about a party she’s been to where she met a woman who worked as a composer and part-time zebra.
“Did you ask her to elaborate?” I asked. “Where does she do her zebra-ing? Does she work shifts at the zoo or does she stay in the wild? Does she eat zebra food?”
It made me wonder if the state of careers advice in schools wasn’t even worse than reported. Even so, when was the last time a careers adviser introduced a child to the possibility of becoming a part-time zebra?
Teaching in a primary school, the subject of careers doesn’t come up too much, so my only real experience of in-school careers advice comes from my own school days. At my girls’ grammar school they were big on aspiration. We were regularly reminded that we were the elite, the leaders of the future, and also pushed heavily towards careers in Stem (in an admirable attempt to redress the gender balance).
It was all very commendable but not particularly helpful if, like me, you really didn’t have a scientific bent and didn’t fancy being a world leader.
On the up side, if you were bored, the quickest route to winding up a teacher was to tell them your goal was to skip university in favour of getting married and staying at home to bake cakes.
The current career ambitions among the younger members of the Brighouse family are to become a vet specialising solely in the treatment of kittens and a “shoulder” (because of the marching). These aspirations may not prove to be definitive, but my kids are fortunate in the sense that they won’t be solely reliant on school to demonstrate the possibilities open to them.
Being the difference
The adults around them do a wide enough range of jobs and know of many more to be able to extend their knowledge beyond the cast of the People Who Help Us scheme of work and the generic footballer/pop star ambition.
If, as the saying goes, you can’t be it unless you can see it, it makes sense to introduce children to a wide range of career options as early as possible.
In some areas, rounding up a group of parents with a diverse set of jobs to share is easy. In others, simply finding a handful of parents who a) have jobs and b) are willing to voluntarily enter the building and talk about them is a nigh on impossible task.
In this case, it is down to teachers to open up new vistas while dousing the intoxicating X-factor myth that success is all down to luck, sparkle and pleading with Simon Cowell that “it’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted”.
Ultimately, whatever the kids in your class want to be when they grow up, they need to know that they’re going to need to work hard. After all, even the part-time zebra had a degree.
Jo Brighouse is a pseudonym for a primary teacher in the Midlands
