Wealden Times | WT212 | October 2019 | Kitchen & Bathroom supplement inside

Education
Time to Reassess
What happens if your child’s strengths don’t fall within the parameters of a
‘traditional’ career path? Hilary Wilce explores the more ‘hands-on’ alternatives
Last summer I met a woman whose son had gone
to a top private school, studied at Imperial College
London and then went on to have a high-flying
career as a structural engineer working all over the world on
multi-million pound contracts. Recently, he had given it all
up to make furniture. “And he said to me, ‘Mum, I’ve never
worked so hard, or earned so little, or been so happy.’”
This woman said her son had always loved
working with his hands, but neither his parents
or his teachers had thought that this could
lead to a suitable career. She now regrets, as she
sees it, ‘pushing’ him into a different role.
But has anything changed since he was at
school? Many of us still expect our children to
abandon their poster paints at an early age in
order to work towards getting as many good
exam results as possible, after which university
and a ‘proper’ career will be the expected course.
However, things may be on the move.
Recently the Government pledged to put an
extra £400m into further education – the world of colleges
and apprenticeships where people learn crafts and trades
and applied knowledge of all kinds – and if the money
comes through it will be a welcome boost for a part of the
educational world that has been neglected for far too long.
Not many of us get the chance to wander freely around further
education colleges seeing the full range of what they offer, but
it is an eye-opening experience. And in a good college it can
be a heart-warming one too, as young students talk about the
pleasure of finally getting to study something that they enjoy and
will give them bankable skills, or mature students who enthuse
about the support they are getting as they study for a new career.
Of course, the reason the sterling work of these colleges is
“We are also
coming to
understand how
we need to use
our hands as well
as our heads to
be fully healthy
and happy”
not better known is because of our widespread snobbishness
about anything that smacks of technical learning.
But this might soon start to change. For one thing, more
young people are discovering the joy of turning their backs
on a desk job to make a living distilling craft gin, baking
sourdough rolls, or rearing rare breed pigs. At the same time,
a slowing economy is making steady jobs look very attractive
– work opportunities for a freelance PR
consultant, for example, can be sketchy, but a
good electrician will always be in demand.
We are also coming to understand how we
need to use our hands as well as our heads to
be fully healthy and happy. Whether you’re
a retiree going to a shared ‘mens’ shed’ to do
some DIY, a stressed city worker relaxing with
an evening of ‘knit and natter’, or someone
getting over a difficult patch by taking on
an allotment, working with our hands, in
groups, seems to satisfy several basic human
needs. So it’s no surprise that more and
more doctors are now advising patients who are recovering
from depression to join gardening and cooking clubs.
At the same time the future of the planet itself is
uncertain and it’s not beyond the realms of possibility
that we may all one day be forced to turn back to
growing, building, making and mending.
In fact, the first straw for this may be already in the wind,
with new research showing that private schools are no longer
pushing students to take as many GCSEs as possible, but
instead encouraging them to engage in more sports and
creative activities. The report doesn’t mention technical
learning, but once we start to explore again what it means
to use all our skills, that surely can’t be far behind?
161 wealdentimes.co.uk