Teacher’s mind:Career guidance is still a major problem

Last week I found myself in an interesting conversation with a former student of mine. Thanks to Facebook he was (and so was I) happy to link up and had all sorts of questions and interesting stories to share. I used the opportunity to find out what he was doing with his life. I learnt that he had temporary employment at a Government institution as he waited to join university. On his part, he wanted to know from me what course he could pursue at the university. For starters he had scored good marks in his exams. However, I found his question quite difficult for me to answer. Suddenly, years after being the trusted teacher he had known with answers to almost anything I was caught flat-footed. I did not know how to respond without showing my disappointment. I was utterly disappointed that a smart boy like him had sat his final secondary school examinations and even worked at a top corporate institution but still had no idea on what academic path he was to take once at the university. He is about to embark on an important journey of his academic life utterly clueless!It is not the first time I am encountering such a scenario but the disappointment has not subsided with time. It is a shame if our education system is producing products that cannot figure out where they want to end up. It is like passengers in the taxi park not knowing which destination they are headed to as they board a minibus. I am not just blowing my trumpet but throughout my school time, I knew what I wanted to be once I was done with school. It does not matter whether that changed from doctor to missionary then architect or lawyer, the point is that I had an idea and this pretty much solved everything else. The moment a child knows what they wish to do for a living then it becomes easy for them to achieve just that since they will certainly invest time in not only working hard but more importantly, finding out what it takes to become that kind of person. Some years back, my colleague and I were shocked when a student who was studying humanities assured us that she wanted to be a doctor. My friend consequently joked that she probably meant witchdoctor. But jokes aside, the student clearly had no idea that if she really wanted to be a doctor then she was expected to be taking on Chemistry, Biology and Physics and not History, Geography and Economics. And this brings me back to my recent conversation with my student. I eventually tried to find out from him what he wanted to do for a living as opposed to what he wanted to study at the university. He had no clue still, but, I humbly advised him to think along those lines. I told him that once he had figured out what he wanted to do for a living, he should try and find out what courses at the university were in that line. My last words to the clueless boy were that he needed to visit the university website to try and check out the different courses, pick out about three and then consult with many other people before making a decision. I simply don’t know how I can be expected to design ones career path. I can only facilitate their journey towards what they want.Parents and teachers have a big role to play in helping students, like the one’s I have mentioned here, to find themselves and in effect find their life paths. Students should know what they want in life but also what they are good at as it is these factors that will determine their life paths more than the words of a former teacher.

Education

Teacher’s mind:Career guidance is still a major problem