Should ‘British’ kids be pushed a bit more?

[Bloodybrambles]

Following a conversation with my sister on how not one of our peers went on to become a doctor/dentist/engineer/research. Out of a couple of hundred students, I can only think of three that studied nursing/midwifery and a handful wanted to do teaching. A few of the ‘clever’ kids went on to do graduate schemes/roles and currently sit in middle management positions.

Our conversation was us having the same thought in school of our country being screwed by looking at our cohort. We’re lucky to have immigration as if the majority of our year flukes the exams and became a doctor, they either wouldn’t have a pen to do the prescription or arguing about having a dress code.

My career advice was somewhat like ‘you’re doing well in your A-levels, you like sport, you should study Sport Science at uni’.

Why on earth wasn’t we encouraged to do something useful? Surely as a country there should be some kind of drive to guide kids into doing something useful for society.

My DH was the first person in his school to go to an Oxbridge uni. He went in for an essay prize in History for Cambridge and won it. But his parents - an engineer and an OT - wanted him to study a vocational subject. So he did Law. We met when he was starting a PhD in Law, and one of the other students in the group that night observed that "lawyers don't do PhDs 🤷‍♀️". Fast forward, he's the author of textbooks he teaches with and various monographs, he runs an interdisciplinary business research centre that's won research grants for more years than most of the other research outfits in the world renowned uni he teaches at. I did a a humanities subject, I work in a top ranking uni research department and have worked in top rank publishing.

You should do what you are good at, it can work and no one should ever lose sight of the fact that education is it's own reward.

Not everyone gets a glittering career in or from the arts. But the same is true in the sciences and the vocational subjects too.

Why do you say it is not true? I was speaking from experience. Perhaps (though I doubt it) things have changed drastically in the last decade.
I am aware most schools do not pay career advice, however in my experience, they do attempt to dish out "career advice".

I’m sure what to think about this.

I’m from a working class background and grew up in a relatively deprived area. I wasn’t pushed by my parents, but they did support me. I was intrinsically nerdy and self-motivated to do the best I could in everything. I did well at school and was the first in my family to go to university, studying medicine.

My brother has a very different personality. He failed his GCSE’s. He now has a job that would not be considered particularly prestigious, but he is very happy, earns more than I do, and totally avoided any student debt. I’m not sure that “pushing” him at school would have made his current life much better, and it might have made him miserable.

I have young children now and I am trying to work out how best to approach their education. Private school is doable but I hear stories of KS1 kids being tutored and I think it’s all a bit ridiculous. I want them to try hard and to encourage a love for learning, but I’d rather they were allowed to play and dig around in the mud whilst they’re still small.

Surely as a country there should be some kind of drive to guide kids into doing something useful for society.

This is interesting because where my DC go to school, this is seen as the sole aim of state education. At the end of Yr7, schools run a project week devoted to introducing the idea of careers and further education choices. In Yr 8, they have one lesson a week on careers where they learn how to identify their strengths/weaknesses, compare how it aligns to a career path, write cv's and cover letters, interview practice. They have talks from previous students who are at uni/college/apprenticeships. They visit the council run careers centre and can arrange a 1:1 meeting with the school's career liaison officer. They are encouraged to apply for work experience and will always be given permission to miss school for it.

In contrast, when I was at school, the only thing that mattered was getting good marks in exams. Careers or uni choices were rarely discussed, I think we had one meeting with a careers advisor in our GCSE year. I ended up doing a degree (badly) I should never have done simply because it was the logical step up from the A-Levels it was decided I should do and I didn't think there were any other options.

I do not think kids - any kids, regardless of their background - should be pushed to get straight As or A*s for the sake of it. There’s already too much chasing gold stars going on in general, in education as well as the workplace. The school system on the whole is sadly not designed to create excellence or exceptional thinking. It’s geared to create uniformity and compliance. Learn the answers to a standardised test, as taught by someone else, score 100% and you’re doing great. There’s little room or even tolerance for all the whys and what ifs that should naturally follow from being exposed to new information.

Kids should certainly be pushed to put in some real effort with things they are interested in, encouraged to follow their natural curiosity, and exposed to various careers so they know what their options might be. But academically speaking, as long as they have a few good subjects they’re showing real interest in, I would not be at all bothered if they’re only making a mediocre effort with the rest. A wide range of interests is of course a good thing, as it can lead to divergent and transdisciplinary thinking. But this is not given to everyone, and very rarely achieved by chasing grades anyway.

How do immigrant children get pushed so hard yet not succumb to mental health disorders, anxiety , panic attacks and depression?

I push DD in the way that I expect her to work to the best of her abilities but I respect that she chooses the subjects.

She applied to study history from September, her main focus is late mediveal/early modern. She loves it, she thrives in it, she is utterly focused and determined. She sees her future in it, not as a stepping stone to go into finance.

There would be no way for her to go STEM/law/economics or any other "desirable" career route, she would be miserable with an average grade.

For me the issue is that teaching is to pass the test, not to teach to enjoy the subject. Also not giving actual feedback what went wrong with a B/C essay is not helping to be better.

Honestly we don't have that luxury.

@ThunderLeaf I find events largely through Facebook and Eventbrite

Our local city has a great Science Festival in February so you can take part in loads of things, and go to public lectures many have Q&A time so DC can ask them questions these are Hugh profile people like Hannah Fry and Helen Czerski, the Techathons was part of that and involved local employers that gave career chats one on one whilst they were helping the groups out £10 for 2 days including lunch and refreshments. A Jurassic Park screening with two Drs in geology and archeology who discussed the science behind the film and realised life discoveries that they had made.

Other places have literary festivals that you can do similar things

We often go to spoken word poetry nights and the guy that organises them recognizes DD now and they've had some good conversations about writing and being published.

The local uni does public lectures so we often go to those.

We've done the RockWatch residential a few years ago so staying at a field centre with geologists and going around the Dorset coast she was able to casually chat to the geologists during the day. But also many of the other parents had interesting jobs and several had Doctorates in weird and wonderful subjects. So she chatted to them about that too.

Obviously it helps that I have a DD into these things and who enjoys them but we've done similar age appropriate versions from her being a tot so it's just part of who she.

She does Young Wardens at our local Wildlife Trust so regularly talks to the staff about working in conservation and what that entails.

She has her heart set in Cambridge and being a surgeon, she's predicted all 9s at GCSE so I'm sure whatever she decides in the end will be a good choice. However I do t particularly want her to go in to medicine whilst it pays well eventually the work life balance and general working conditions of junior doctors and the NHS isn't something I really want her to have to deal with.

However the choice is hers but in the meantime I'm trying to expose her to as many different career fields as possible so she can make an informed decision and have a slight insight into what they involve.

@Lentilweaver seriously! Plenty of Brits don't want to push their kids but they have housing equity, savings, pensions, etc that they know can cushion their children's adulthoods, even if they don't have high-paying careers they know they'll be taken care of.

I think there's also a real reluctance to make kids feel any kind of discomfort or to push their boundaries - I'm not talking make them study 40 hours a week, but pushing them into the zone where they can build grit and resilience.

I came to this country with nothing but an education (which I loved - I adored school, no one needed to push me!), but I turned that into a successful career, and I have the same high expectations for my kids. I am fully aware that as they progress through their schooling, we will learn more about who they are, their strengths and weaknesses, and adjust accordingly. But the key is to aim high.

Mental illness isn't a luxury.

No. Only an immigrant will understand this. I can't really explain it and I won't try.

I grew up in the 80/90's in a deprived area. There was a small handful of students who were encouraged academically with a view to going to university . I'd say maybe ten went. Most of us didn't stay on for A levels. I was told to try and get a job in a nursery.

Few people have excelled there's a few teachers, a policeman that I know of.

I push DD in the way that I expect her to work to the best of her abilities but I respect that she chooses the subjects.

She applied to study history from September, her main focus is late mediveal/early modern. She loves it, she thrives in it, she is utterly focused and determined. She sees her future in it, not as a stepping stone to go into finance.

Your DD sounds great @reluctantbrit - hope she achieves what she wants.

We hope to take a similar approach with our (much younger) DD. I feel strongly that there is a middle way between the laissez-faire, 'As long as they're happy' mindset of many Brits and the pushy, tiger parent approach of certain immigrant groups. We want to convey the message that DD is free to choose whatever career path she will find fulfilling, but if it's a non-vocational or niche academic area then she will need to be bloody good at what she does, aim for the top universities etc. Basically that you need to think carefully and have a plan (and a Plan B).

DP and I both attended a super selective grammar school, loved it and did well academically. But that grammar, like many others, is now overwhelmingly Asian and extremely focused on STEM subjects at the expense of everything else (it was much more holistic when we went there, with humanities subjects, music and the Arts afforded equal status). We won't be looking to send DD there, as I want her to have a genuinely holistic education, plus don't want her to face the pressure of intense tutoring, with the bit unlikely outcome that she will 'fail' (there are now around 15 applicants for every place).

On the other hand, I find the attitude of most of our non-immigrant British friends to be pretty non-aspirational and anti-intellectual - there's a lot of obsessing about mental health and 'stress', and essentially the attitude is that you just go to your nearest comp and aim to keep yourself out of trouble. It's not seen as the done thing to be overly serious about academics, or too focused on a specific life goal. These friends are largely middle-class professionals themselves, so I do find the apathy hard to fathom.

The reluctance to be seen to put in effort when it comes to school/academics does seem to be a peculiarly British cultural trait. Even at my grammar there was way more kudos attached to aceing exams without having revised, and everyone pretended they hadn't.

@Lentilweaver

Honestly we don't have that luxury but young people in all countries appear to be struggling. I'm not being negative. I'm genuinely amazed and wonder how? .

I'm autistic, undiagnosed until my forties. I don't need to be an immigrant to understand pushy parents, a society full of unfamiliar rules that don't make sense to me, and struggling on with schoolwork until I collapse.

Many do succumb, sometimes it doesn’t show up until many years later

Well, there is a fair amount of masking and pushing it all down, I think.

But as I said, neither of my DC have done STEM. One did an IR degree because it was her passion- looking at retraining now!- and the second wants to go into finance ( should still do ok).

Yes, definitely.

Not necessarily into the traditional professional careers (law, medicine, etc) but into jobs that create value somehow. Jobs that are useful and advance society through application of skill and effort.

We have an ambition crisis where the options in people's minds are: 1) do what you love as an artist or singer or something; 2) advance society by becoming a social worker or a charity officer or a civil servant; or 3) grind hard and enter a traditional profession with a clear advancement path

Ambition doesn't always look like (3). Building businesses, engineering, connecting people together to do useful work, even building communities through volunteer work - they all require people to be active and purposeful, working to solve problems, self-starting, finding work that needs to doing, taking ownership and seeing something through. That's the ambition gap.

Tbh I work in a (3) type job and I think it's negative for society that it takes smart people and directs them into white-collar busywork. But I digress.

English specialising for only 3 a levels and 1 degree subject means young people drop science very fast and can't get back. IB is much better as 6 subjects. USA degree system is eclectic in the first year

Is there really that much to wonder about? Something always has to give, too much pressure in one area, something else has to give. Eg certain cultures will prioritise tuition over sport / other extra curriculars. I’m sure this won’t apply to all though.

As pp said, masking, suppression etc occur.

British teens in general are quite immature. I used to work in a school with a large number of international students and the difference was staggering. Mainly British boys aged 17 acting like 8 year olds, making silly noises and their European peers were just so much more ambitious. This was a private school. Don't get me wrong, we expect kids to grow up too quick, but culturally we are very different.

You said careers advice is wishy washy - more about getting the most kids into the best uni to make the school look good than about what is best for the kids. The "careers" advice rarely seems to extend beyond university applications

Trained Careers guidance is impartial and isn’t about ‘what looks best for the school’. However, many schools don’t values trained professionals enough to pay for them, and they will get any member of staff in to manage UCAS, and then call it careers guidance.

More fool you. "Certain immigrant groups" and "Asians" are not a monolith. But no matter, you've left an excellent space for someone who will benefit from the opportunity you've chosen to deny for your daughter.

Bet they love you.

Watch them vanish into the distance and reflect on that when they get older.