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#1585144
https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/br ... or-teacher

I found this profoundly depressing. A massive obsession with sports personalities is presumably in there, as is the complete failure of the teaching profession to get across to young children the range of fascinating careers that could be open to them (apart from teaching apparently - despite the fact that I know very few teachers who seem happy in the jobs themselves.)

If more young girls want to be hairdressers than scientists, is this to some degree a bit of a failure of both science education, and feminism?

On the other hand, at least there is at least the assurance that virtually no children want to be bankers or work in advertising.

Why do paramedics have such an image problem do you think?

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By Dave W
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#1585179
Genghis the Engineer wrote:... is the complete failure of the teaching profession to get across to young children the range of fascinating careers that could be open to them .


To be fair, the teachers haven't had long; it's Primary School.

I blame the parents.
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#1585180
Take with a pinch of salt required I think. As is usual with a lot of these things, you have to think of the context of the kids actually being asked these questions - at primary age they don't really understand a lot of the detail of careers/job titles/how subjects relate to career fields etc... My primary age children do some amazing stuff at school that I would recognise as core STEM - they are doing forces and metals at the minute, but they wouldn't have a clue if asked a stack of loaded questions about what job they wanted to do (and would probably answer the first 'enjoyable memory' thing that popped into their head - e.g. sport from last weekend)
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#1585196
At that age the only job I knew I didn't want to do was killing pigs - I'd seen that and it didn't look fun.

Flying aeroplanes and driving steam trains looked like good things to do. I'd seen teaching obviously but had no call to be one (and all I knew about professors was that they invented machines which blew up, so that didn't push me to my current career).

Banker? Not sure I'd ever heard of bankers. If I had, they clearly managed large, pink, pottery receptacles where the grownups kept their pocket money.
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By Dave W
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#1585201
profchrisreed wrote:At that age the only job I knew I didn't want to do was killing pigs - I'd seen that and it didn't look fun.
...
Banker? Not sure I'd ever heard of bankers. If I had, they clearly managed large, pink, pottery receptacles where the grownups kept their pocket money.


So you'd seen grown-ups withdrawing their pocket money?
#1585202
Dave W wrote:
Genghis the Engineer wrote:... is the complete failure of the teaching profession to get across to young children the range of fascinating careers that could be open to them .


To be fair, the teachers haven't had long; it's Primary School.

I blame the parents.


I'd certainly blame the parents, but I think that there's a lot of experience that the basic pathways of future life, including likely career aspirations, are often set younger than 9.

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By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1585228
UCL ought to know better than get involved with fatuous nonsense like this. In my day they would have drawn engine drivers or nurses it makes no real difference to most kids. A few will already have a passion for something and make a career out of it, but they are the exception. Others will eventually find their niche.

Nothing to see here, move along please :roll:
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#1585250
The smart phone and TV have completely destroyed inventive thought. It will not be long before a flexible smart device will be imprinted to a preferred hand and necks will evolve with a permanent bend. The Victorian age Great Britain (esp Scotland per capita) gave so much to the outside world - engineering, medicine and agriculture etc. It was a golden age of inventiveness where there were no distractions of on line games and what was on the box at 8 o'clock to-night. Kids today -- confused dot com !!
#1585265
Genghis the Engineer wrote:If more young girls want to be hairdressers than scientists, is this to some degree a bit of a failure of both science education, and feminism?
G

Maybe...depends how you look at it.
My mother wanted her only daughter to be a hairdresser - I was never terribly girly, apart from a liking for fashion (it's another type of design and construction). Eventually I found out her reasoning...........she considered it a very portable skill, with reasonable earnings, that I could take anywhere in the world (her family have a nomad gene). Actually, not bad thinking on her part.
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