How many par­ents recite reli­giously to their chil­dren, I want you to do bet­ter than me, I want you to have more?

If we want our chil­dren to grow up to have more, do bet­ter, suf­fer less and achieve inter­est­ing, fam­ily sus­tain­ing, sta­ble careers with poten­tial for growth to pro­vide for the good things in life – we have to pro­vide them with guid­ance and career devel­op­ment from early on.

It has been shown that chil­dren 12 to 16 exhibit rel­a­tive sta­bil­ity in their voca­tional inter­est devel­op­ment and it appears in chil­dren as young as 8 years old. With apti­tude assess­ment at around 8 years of age and expo­sure to a wide vari­ety of cor­re­lat­ing career options – we would help chil­dren explore areas they would expe­ri­ence sat­is­fac­tion in and excel in as adults and not leave them to floun­der down a com­plex path with­out breadcrumbs.

The truth is, schools have fallen short when it comes to edu­ca­tional lead­er­ship and don’t do a very good job at career explo­ration and trans­lat­ing all that aca­d­e­mic sub­ject mat­ter into real­is­tic visions of what it could be use­ful for. They teach a lot of the­ory and rote mem­o­riza­tion but lit­tle appli­ca­tion. For example:

If the 4^th grade sci­ence class watched and learned how a motor works, they would be explor­ing engi­neer­ing prin­ci­ples dri­ven by sci­ence and math. It wouldn’t be fas­ci­nat­ing to all the stu­dents but it would be a moment of crys­tal­liza­tion for some. Read­ing about rev­o­lu­tions and laws of physics in a book and mem­o­riz­ing the for­mu­las with­out visu­als, tac­tile and sen­sory stim­u­la­tion…. not so much.

These are the expe­ri­ences chil­dren need. Instead, we have the “well rounded” approach with no direc­tion that expects chil­dren to find them­selves at very young ages with lit­tle guid­ance – when in truth, how many 45 year old peo­ple haven’t yet dis­cov­ered what they want to be when they grow up? We fall into careers unless we are one of those very for­tu­nate indi­vid­u­als seem­ingly born with a vocation.

I would wager to say peo­ple are born with apti­tude not a voca­tion and par­ents of these chil­dren iden­tify their apti­tudes at a very early age and then pro­vide stim­u­la­tion, encour­age­ment and devel­op­men­tal oppor­tu­ni­ties to sup­port their inter­est. It’s eas­ier to iden­tify in some chil­dren, per­haps most notably in those deemed “gifted” in art, music or lan­guage, because of their visual and audi­tory cues. How­ever, all humans have apti­tudes to be dis­cov­ered and developed.

If most chil­dren have real­ized their voca­tional inter­est devel­op­ment by age 16, high school apti­tude assess­ments are too late. They miss the oppor­tu­nity to iden­tify apti­tude, pair it with poten­tial inter­ests and pro­vide devel­op­ment and guid­ance, so that when a child reaches high school there is a ten­ta­tive plan for a career path and under­stand­ing of how and what it will take to pur­sue it.

Changes in con­sumer demand, improve­ments in tech­nol­ogy, and many other fac­tors over the next decade will con­tribute to the con­tin­u­ally chang­ing employ­ment struc­ture of the U.S. econ­omy. The 15.3 mil­lion jobs expected to be added by 2018 will not be evenly dis­trib­uted across major indus­try and occu­pa­tional groups. It’s going to take strate­gic plan­ning to make the appro­pri­ate matches needed to carry us for­ward as a dom­i­nant and highly pro­duc­tive, sat­is­fied workforce.

Par­ents, schools and com­mu­ni­ties with a desire to see their chil­dren thrive and who are will­ing to sub­scribe to the “it takes a vil­lage to raise a child” phi­los­o­phy should work now, with chil­dren in their first years of ele­men­tary school. They can take steps to:

• Iden­tify emerg­ing apti­tudes through assess­ments at 2^nd, 4^th and 6^th grades to observe real­iza­tion, devel­op­ment and change.
• Research occu­pa­tional pro­jec­tions to under­stand which jobs will be in high demand and well com­pen­sated when the child will reach post-secondary education.
• Match emerg­ing apti­tudes to expo­sure of cor­re­spond­ing fore­casted high demand occu­pa­tions through appro­pri­ate activ­i­ties, read­ing, field trips, toys and games, job shad­ow­ing, etc.
• Pro­vide encour­age­ment and access for chil­dren to pur­sue pas­sions for which they have a proven apti­tude – not to ful­fill parent’s dreams.
• For chil­dren with tech­ni­cal and not nec­es­sar­ily aca­d­e­mic apti­tude, iden­tify voca­tional high schools to begin early engage­ment and skill development.

This type of approach may sound cookie cut­ter­ish and struc­tured. Why shouldn’t it be? Schools already fol­low an assem­bly line approach, one that is not indi­vid­u­al­ized, herds stu­dents through a well-rounded cur­ricu­lum that has lit­tle applic­a­bil­ity to work readi­ness or life skills, and with the excep­tion of voca­tional high schools, grad­u­ate stu­dents skilled in one thing only – how to study. Largely because of lack of apti­tude and inter­est iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and devel­op­ment, those who go on to col­lege change their major 75% of the time, adding addi­tional semes­ters, expe­ri­enc­ing anx­i­ety, fac­ing uncer­tainty and fear­ing failure..

Imag­ine how a well thought out, prac­ti­cal plan would help pre­pare our youth with a mean­ing­ful foun­da­tion for the rest of their life. What do you think of this approach?

Charts are from BLS Occu­pa­tional Out­look Hand­book, 2010-11 Edi­tion, Overview of the 2008–18 Pro­jec­tions