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.

I don't berate or belitte my kids. I myself have sat with them and helped them with school during primary and secondary. Once they discovered their interests, I helped them nurture it to the best of my ability.

Yes I pushed my DC for the 11+. The local comprehensive honestly was quite shit and the students there not bright. And yes come to university I wanted the best for my children, sadly the eldest was unsuccessful for Oxbridge. That's okay though. I pushed my DC to choose the best university academically despite concerns of "bad social life".

Who said I was talking about trained careers advisors. I was talking about the advice that is actually given out, by whoever is giving it.

@IdliDosa Oxbridge is a great goal but even with 4 A* at A levels my DS did not get in. The conpetition is insane for certain courses.

He was sad for a while. But he's now very happy in a ' lesser' uni and already has good job prospects. Hoping for another crack at Oxbridge for Masters. I don't see anything wrong in encuraging ambition. DD however is not Oxbridge material but she is aiming for a top redbrick.

Oxbridge is not just about hard work. Ultimately your mentality has to fit too. Lots of people fail to make it every year on that basis.

" Anything we did we had to be good at and if not, we were pulled out. Be that team sports, learning an instrument, exams or the Easter bonnet parade. This taught us resilience and perseverance."

This interested me. In my mind pulling kids out of things they aren't doing well at doesn't teach them resilience or perseverance. Perhaps this does however help them focus in on what they ARE good at? I think that is the struggle with many kids (myself included) in that if you get all A's (or all C's), how do you know what you should do? I strongly remember thinking I loved Classics (dad vetoed me studying), Biology (wasn't allowed to do a science A'level as was bad at maths) and History (again was told there are no jobs in doing history). I wanted to do psychology but the school didn't offer it. So already, at 16 I was confused about what I enjoyed and what was possible to earn from. Agree with pp we are forced to make these life changing choices far too young and often without guidance.

True enough. They are looking for very special candidates with an interest in their subject which DS couldn't demonstrate. But he may be able to do so in the future.

Luckily these days other unis do just as well.

Yes I encouraged my DC to go to the best university possibly for their ability. My DS did well outside of Oxbridge.

Yeah, it sounds like you’re frustrated that, despite doing well in school, not many people ended up in careers that could make a big difference, like doctors or engineers. It's weird that the system didn’t push more kids toward these useful fields. Instead, it feels like there’s more focus on easier or more “fun” paths, like sports science.

It’s a good point though—maybe there should be more guidance to help kids pick careers that actually help society, not just the ones that seem easy or prestigious. It’s not about pushing kids into high-paying jobs, but making sure they know they can make a real impact in important fields.

If you are only 30 then your contemporaries already in “middle management” are doing quite well, give them time to rise through the ranks!

I went to a state comprehensive school with a very broad demographic, kids of long-term unemployed manual workers in class alongside kids of University professors and lawyers. It was striking that the ones who stayed at school past 16 almost all lived in the same part of town. Most of the ones who stayed on ended up engineers, lawyers, civil servants, software developers, accountants etc and most of us also left our town to work in London or Canada, New Zealand, Middle East, Hong Kong etc

If it makes you feel any better, I went to Cambridge and not even everyone who gets there ends up setting the world on fire! (I’m a moderately successful commercial lawyer)

@Lentilweaver - this is correct really because it's the intensity of intellect that Oxbridge wants. The BA system is a uniquely intense bun fight against your contemporaries.

There are lots of other great places; the post grad system is a bit mixed. If doing a masters, then employment prospects should be key, not the place. The experience as a post grad is very different at Oxford and Cambridge from a BA.

I don't know. There's a fine balance.

I come from a country where the entire population as a whole is wildly OVER educated.

If you apply for a job, every one of those applicants went to a good university.

Children spend 6 hours a day studying, on top of usual school hours. It's miserable and we have the highest suicide rate in the world (I think it's still the case, might be rivals with somewhere like Japan on that)

I will also add that it's considered a but of an embarrassment to have a parent who, for example, is a firefighter

The children of that adult are often pushed beyond all reasonable measure to achieve great success

If you're not in an amazing business career, a Dr or a lawyer, you're a failure to a lot of people. Lots would see you as a run of the mill failure, but a failure all the same

Anything we did we had to be good at and if not, we were pulled out. Be that team sports, learning an instrument, exams or the Easter bonnet parade. This taught us resilience and perseverance.

Quite the opposite. It teaches you that if you don't succeed first time, you should just give up. You never learn how it feels to struggle with a subject. It teaches impatience. It teaches fear of failure, instead of acceptance that sometimes things go wrong but we have to retry them anyway.

If you ever become disabled, you will find that "being pulled out" aka "giving up on a hard task" isn't an option when the task in question is something like making breakfast one-handed.

Lethoso? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

I think schools actively discourage children, my daughter was told by 3 different members of staff that becoming a vet would be far too difficult!! They may have been right but encouraging her to give up was disgusting.

That makes no sense. Firefighters save lives.

The most successful person I know, IMO, is my gas fitter. He runs his own business, has an apprentice, earns enough to keep his family, and is happy doing his job.

@selffellatingouroborosofhate South Korea

The work culture is so bad. And people like to do a lot of 'Keeping Up with the Kim's'. Loads of people in eye watering debts to maintain that image. All with amazing degrees and a level of education that would flaw most of the UK

You could save for 40+ years, every penny of your salary, not just a %, and you'd never have enough to buy an apartment in most areas of the country

I don't want that for my children. Success doesn't mean happy. And your sense of self worth needs to remain intact to have a life worth living

@selffellatingouroborosofhate you are right of course. But it's because it isn't a difficult job to enter into in terms of academics

My DH is a first gen immigrant from India. Very poor family. No safety net back home. Parents could barely speak English or guide him.

He pulled himself up from that to make a decent living because they pushed him relentlessly. He went to an Indian uni for engineering where the acceptance rate is 0.1 %. Way harder to get into than Oxbridge. Struggled his way up the corporate ladder with a funny name and a funny accent.

If you talked to him about MH, he would laugh in your face. And of course we can relax a bit with our DC, now having savings. But we can only do so because his parents would not accept anything less than 100%. All his siblings are successful.

People really do not realise that panic attacks and anxiety for some are indeed a luxury. Poverty is dire in other countries where there are no benefits.

@selffellatingouroborosofhate @NordicwithTeen Maybe it was reverse psychology but if I wanted to do something I put the effort in so I could keep going. I know this may not work on every child but I was just explaining what my childhood with immigrant parents was like. We were not pulled out straight away. We definitely had warnings and told to buck up first. It is difficult to explain but we were raised knowing that anything we did required effort.

Poor mental health is better than near starvation, which makes for worse mental health frankly. That is the choice for many first gen immigrants.

That's some great info, thank you for taking the time to give me such detail, I am making some notes from what you have written x

how not one of our peers went on to become a doctor/dentist/engineer/research

We do need to get away from this narrow definition of what is useful and worthwhile.

People should be less obsessed by Oxbridge. It's not a finishing school for hard work. It's for obsessives and genius people which is reflected in what intellectual attainment its alumni achieve.

A lot of them would not meet the criteria that is said to be set by first generation immigrants on this thread. Cambridge and Oxford look after some remarkable minds and get the best of out them.

You want to be an accountant, lawyer, doctor, vet, it's not for you. It's not about future vocation. Very different model from the rest of world.

I suspect also that people with poor mental health don't make the decision to emigrate in the first place. You have to have a certain degree of motivation to move countrie. It's certainly not the case that Indian suicides are rare: the per capita suicide rate in India is nearly twice that of the UK.