"What do you want to do when you grow up?" is the wrong question.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”; it’s the question that we’re asked from about as early as we can conceive of what growing up and having some sort of job means. And for many of us, the question keeps getting asked, again and again, maybe in slightly more sophisticated ways that involve paths into industries or quizzes that probably tell us nothing we didn’t already know, but it’s essentially the same question. Of course, careers education varies greatly from school to school, but for too many students the approach to careers education is still far too linear and far too simplistic.

Careers education is still too often based upon an increasingly outdated view of education, of jobs and of careers. It's based on the idea that you go through education, get a job and stick with that job. And therefore your decisions in education are to be made with this career goal in mind. But increasingly, people aren’t staying in one career or even one industry for most of their lives. People are increasingly likely to do one job for a while, and then move into a whole other sector. And so people don’t so much need to know a lot about one field, but instead be well equipped to take on a wide variety of roles. And so our careers education needs to shift away from the idea of a single career path, and towards teaching students to be flexible and to be creative in their approach to the job market and equipped them with the broad range of skills they will need for this.

Work experience should be compulsory for all secondary school children; even doing just a week of good work experience can be really beneficial. But schools should be taking this a step further by encouraging and facilitating students to do volunteering, or run clubs, or just get part time jobs. Working in retail in Saturdays will teach you a tonne of skills that will be useful when you need to get a full time job. University is a great chance for those who go to do things like volunteer, get involved in societies or work part time but, especially for those who don’t go to university, schools should be ensuring their pupils have the same kind of experiences and opportunities.

And this should be part of a shift in focus from choosing your career path to taking the opportunities available to you, making good decisions in the present for your development, building skills and exploring the big old mess that is the world of work. We should be ncouraging students to make decisions in the present that will be valuable experiences, rather than focusing on charting a course for the future; instead of asking “what do you want to do when you grow up”, we should be asking what students want to do, want to experience and what they want to get involved with now.

Additionally, careers education can still be far too focused on “this is what a job will involve if you get it”. Schools should be better at equipping pupils with tools to get into those jobs in the first place, from CV writing to approaching employers to creating a good online presence (and actually how to create a visible and strong presence; not just “keep your facebook as private as possible and make yourself entirely invisible because sometimes you’re noticeably drunk”).

Careers education should be a central part of secondary school, especially post-14, not just something on the side. It should be comprehensive and it should be about what students can do to grow and develop right now, not just what they might want to do one day. Not only is this view increasingly out of sync with people’s career paths, it puts an unnecessary amount of pressure on young people to make the “right” choices now; because if it’s leading you down a path that will end at a job for life…that’s terrifying! Easing that pressure by focusing on doing a lot of things and building a broad skills base, and emphasising that jobs need not be for life would not just improve careers education but would ease this pressure on students, making the transition from education to work that little bit easier and maybe even make the whole thing a bit more fun!

On young people in the Labour Party...

Recently I went to two back to back events; the first put on by the Fabian Society, the second by the Young Fabians. The first, the Fabian Society’s Annual House of Commons Tea, was a discussion about how to better engage people in politics, while the Young Fabian event was a discussion about how to get young people more engaged in politics.

I assumed I wouldn’t be the only person attending both these event back to back; as it turns out I was only one of two. And in the House of Commons Tea there was quite a notable lack of young people (which is a bit of a blurry term, so broadly speaking I’m talking about typically student age, or younger). Of course, it should be noted that the Young Fabian event was free while the Commons Tea cost £15, and the Young Fabian event being held in the evening may also have made it more accessible, but this does reflect a trend I am  increasingly aware of in the events I attend; that with the exceptions of big, national events (National Conference, Progress Conference, Fabian Conference; although even the Fabian’s summer conference had very few young attendees) young people tend to attend “young people” events; Young Labour, Labour Students, Young Fabians etc, but seem less inclined to attend events not specifically aimed at young people.

I often get asked at such events “how do we get young people into politics?” and it always confuses me because I know so many incredibly politically active young people…but then I’ll look around the room and realise that I am one of very few young people there.

This is not to say that there aren’t problems of political apathy in my generation (both in terms of a general disinterest and a dissatisfaction with mainstream politics; two rather different issues that are often clumsily grouped together), but that I can understand why some people would be forgiven for thinking there are hardly any young politicos at all; which is just not true.

As I said, this isn’t the case with big, national events; but it’s also untrue on the campaign trail. When activists are out on the doorstep, there is a clear mix of age groups, and young activists are almost without a doubt out in force.

So why, when it comes to events, might young people be so much less inclined to attend events not specifically aimed at them? Perhaps there is a worry that, as someone younger, you’ll be patronised/ignored/etc. Personally I’ve never experienced this, but I can understand why it might be a worry for some people.

Young Labour, Young Fabian and Labour Student’s event are also, I’ve often found, more discursive than events not aimed at young people; with a far more open format than the “panel that talks after which people ask the panel questions” format; where the audience is really able to engage in discussion and debate. This explanation does become rather circular, though; are young people drawn to more discussion based events, or are they better at putting on more discussion based events?

Do young people just need…some sort of hook; something to tell them “you! This event is for you!”. The other exception I’ve seen to the young-people-not-attending-not-young-people-aimed-events was the recent Fabian Women’s network summer reception, at which there were plenty of people my age; these were all women (as, of course, were most of the attendees; but not all); so not drawn in by the fact that this event was aimed at them as young people, but that it was still specifically aimed at them as women. Perhaps. This is just speculation.

And this whole post is really just speculation and personal reflection; I’d be interested to hear how far it reflects other people’s experiences; young people who feel they only really attend young people events, or that they attend a range of events, older people who feel they do or don’t see young people at the events they go to etc.

Because if this sense I’ve got of this generational divide between activists is accurate; I don’t think that’s that great a thing. I love the younger wings of the party; I think they hold amazing events and are full of amazing people, and I think having these events and groups aimed specifically at young people is without a doubt a good thing. But when these become the only parts of the party young people really interactive they can become somewhat inward looking; and I don’t think that helps young people understand or feel part of the wider movement.

That’s, of course, just the problem; I have a few thoughts on why this might happen and I want to start exploring potential solutions. But it’s only something I’ve recently come to really register; and it’s not something I ever really hear discussed when we talk about young people in the Labour movement; so I thought that it was at least worth pointing out.