How often do we have the career discussion with the children with "Do you want to be an engineer, doctor, scientist, journalist....". This is what we were asked as kids and it is time we changed the discussion. We have to start thinking careers beyond the degree (and also colleges).
If we look at ourselves, after having spent 10,15,20 years of our lives working, how much is driven by the degree? So what are we doing everyday? We are solving problems and the problems could be engineering problems, social problems, personal problems, management problems. Also while there are big buckets and categories, all of them are related to one another. So a good way to have a career discussion would be, what are the kind of problems your kid wants to solve. Once you do that you open a whole wide world of opportunities. Your child really cares about cancer?, let him/her go work on that. Someone wants to generate green power, sure. What about saving the coral reefs (or the mangroves) from getting extinct, why not. Clean the Ganga, fix the religion, help kids learn, make the government work, travel faster, go to space, make a movie, spread the Indian culture....and the list is endless.
Does the goal sound too big for children to understand. I doubt it. Children can understand a lot more than we think. The place we fail is that we ourselves cannot understand that, this is where we need to do our learning. Rather than limit them by our knowledge, we need to learn with their vision. The key is to give them data points. Understand and explain to them what it will mean to get there. Get them ready for the journey. Connect and get them connected with folks who might have traveled that path. They have the vision and we have to connect the dots.
Equally important is to ask the question "how". If we were to take an example of say "Travel faster", the pertinent question would be "How can I make people/goods travel faster". In this, there is an engineering problem, there is a communication problem, there is a design problem, policy problem and many more. So help the children decide on, how you want to contribute, based on their skills and interest.
Is this system without faults, of course not. The children could be limited by what they see around them and that could be both good or bad. The key is to give the children exposure to the world and the happenings. With the internet, there are channels available to explore things that were impossible in the past. There is an information deluge on the internet you say, well that is a key skill for them to acquire too, get loads of information and then filter it into knowledge. Will the jobs pay? I don't know, but getting a job should not be a milestone of success. There is value for excellence and it is better to be excellent at something and get paid meagerly than to be average at something else and get paid handsomely.
For a very very long time we have limited the next generation's vision, it is time to give them flight.
If we look at ourselves, after having spent 10,15,20 years of our lives working, how much is driven by the degree? So what are we doing everyday? We are solving problems and the problems could be engineering problems, social problems, personal problems, management problems. Also while there are big buckets and categories, all of them are related to one another. So a good way to have a career discussion would be, what are the kind of problems your kid wants to solve. Once you do that you open a whole wide world of opportunities. Your child really cares about cancer?, let him/her go work on that. Someone wants to generate green power, sure. What about saving the coral reefs (or the mangroves) from getting extinct, why not. Clean the Ganga, fix the religion, help kids learn, make the government work, travel faster, go to space, make a movie, spread the Indian culture....and the list is endless.
Does the goal sound too big for children to understand. I doubt it. Children can understand a lot more than we think. The place we fail is that we ourselves cannot understand that, this is where we need to do our learning. Rather than limit them by our knowledge, we need to learn with their vision. The key is to give them data points. Understand and explain to them what it will mean to get there. Get them ready for the journey. Connect and get them connected with folks who might have traveled that path. They have the vision and we have to connect the dots.
Equally important is to ask the question "how". If we were to take an example of say "Travel faster", the pertinent question would be "How can I make people/goods travel faster". In this, there is an engineering problem, there is a communication problem, there is a design problem, policy problem and many more. So help the children decide on, how you want to contribute, based on their skills and interest.
Is this system without faults, of course not. The children could be limited by what they see around them and that could be both good or bad. The key is to give the children exposure to the world and the happenings. With the internet, there are channels available to explore things that were impossible in the past. There is an information deluge on the internet you say, well that is a key skill for them to acquire too, get loads of information and then filter it into knowledge. Will the jobs pay? I don't know, but getting a job should not be a milestone of success. There is value for excellence and it is better to be excellent at something and get paid meagerly than to be average at something else and get paid handsomely.
For a very very long time we have limited the next generation's vision, it is time to give them flight.
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