On Thursday February 7th, I attended a career development workshop put on by the Cal State East Bay Career Development Center. We did some activities designed to show you your interests and abilities and how they may fit in the job market. We were also given a tutorial of the CDC website where we learned how to navigate the various online job resources available to us. We were also informed of various services the CDC counselors offer, like job counseling and practice interviews.
The staff was very knowledgeable and genuinely cared about the students pursuing their careers. The tools we used to discover our interests and talents are well thought through and seem fairly effective. The support of the CDC staff combined with all the tools at our disposal seem like they can really help set students up for success, but I have some serious issues with the whole approach.
With all the things I've mentioned in mind, lets talk about other students, and their reactions to the CDC workshop. Most were extremely disinterested in the workshop not to mention their education in general. The CDC staff could feel this during their presentation, and I suspect that many educators would agree with me about a lack of interest in learning. I imagine this isn't very motivating for the educators.
Why are students so apathetic towards these things that could further their careers and improve their lives? The answer is that education is a massive failure. In school we are taught to read and write, mathematics and science, but that is not what we learn. What we learn is less obvious. We learn the underlying system. Students sit in class and barely listen as information is force fed to them, wich they later regurgitate during testing. Students learn that they can get by with a bare minimum of effort and have no interest in mastering information since none of it is made relevant to the real world. Our inate curiosity and creativity is largely stamped out from years of the factory style conveyor belt of knowledge that hardly matters in today’s world. Our education teaches us to be dependent on employers the way a child is dependent on its parents. We are incredibly passive and complacent when it comes to finding our way to contribute to society. In today’s globalized job markets we have to make ourselves as valuable as we can and learn to adapt quickly if we're to get our piece of the pie.
The attendees of the CDC career workshop do not care and are not engaged because they are obligated to be there to earn a grade, so they continue their course on the mindless treadmill of higher education. Its really quite sad. All their lives they've probably heard something like this: "go to school, get good grades, go to college, get a degree, get a good job, etc, etc..." That is empty and hollow. How about "Learn as much as you can because the more knowledge you have, the more value you can bring to the market and the more efficiently you can deliver it. That is what will allow you to lead a creative, productive, satisfying life." I'd say the latter speaks far more to the human spirit.
The way to educate people is to inspire them, to instill in them the desire to go out and gain more knowledge because it is intrinsically satisfying and it will help them get farther ahead. The solution is NOT to smash square pegs through the round holes of our education system. Education is an attitude, not a compilation of out dated information lying dormant in our frontal lobes. If we as students were taught to look at the world this way, good careers would follow.
The CDC's formulaic approach to success is about as inspiring as the previous decade or so of our academic careers, which is to say not very. We've all learned to expect similar experiences with our occupations. Few people I've met approach the job market with excitement. Most see it as a continuation of the first quarter century of their lives made more tolerable by a decent benefits package. This one of the more positive outlooks espoused by my peers.
No thanks CDC you can keep your career advice, I think I'll figure things out on my own. Who knows, maybe I’ll come across something your formulas and personality tests didn't account for.
1 comment:
Jay,
The Chinese have a saying: There are no bad students, only bad teachers.
Our education system is based on the opposite premise- that there are no bad teachers, only bad students.
Richard Boyatzis, a professor in Organizational Behavior, Psychology and Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve co-authored a very interesting article about emotional intelligence and career success in which he describes the concept of self directed learning:
"Self-directed learning is the key to developing emotional intelligence competencies. This is especially true for career professionals; adults learn what they want to learn. Other things, even if acquired temporarily (i.e., for a test), are soon forgotten (Specht and Sandlin, 1991). Professional colleagues, clients, supervisors, and subordinates may act as if they care about learning something, go through the motions, but they proceed to disregard it or forget it-unless it is something they want to learn. These observations have resulted from 35 years of research with this model in contexts ranging from treating alcoholics and drug addicts to management and leadership development to graduate education (Kolb et. al., 1968; Kolb and Boyatzis, 1970a & b; and other studies cited in Boyatzis, 2001).
This occurs because most, if not all, sustainable behavioral change is intentional. Self-directed change is an intentional change in an aspect of who you are (i.e., the Real) or who you want to be (i.e., the Ideal), or both. Self-directed learning is self-directed change in which you are aware of the change and understand the process of change. "
The real travesty is the failure to inspire, to engage and to respect each individual's differences.
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