Seth Godin, an American author, entrepreneur, marketer, and public speaker once said: “You shouldn’t become a middle-school mathematics teacher because you love math. You should do it because you love teaching.”
Importance of career counselling can’t be ignored in today’s competitive world as new career opportunities, which never existed before are now suddenly emerging and this is putting a lot of pressure on the new generation to excel academically and professionally in order to meet with the demand.
In my opinion, schools should start spreading awareness of career choices in grade five as it is never too early to start thinking about future educational and career choices. It will immensely save our children from blindly following the rat race as the problem with the rat race is that even if you win, you will still be a rat.
In high-school, students begin to clearly understand various professions and start to envision themselves in different careers. They are aware of different aspects like status in society, levels of income, and how their interests and values will fit within a given profession. This is where the school’s career counsellors can help by inviting various professionals from different industries to talk to the students and their parents. These professionals should share their stories along with informing students about various abilities and capabilities that are required to venture into these professions. These kinds of talks will inspire our children to think about different career options and study paths that they can follow other than giving them an idea about how the real world works.
Another factor that career counselling should tackle is cultural taboos about various occupations. Due to this many students do not even consider an ideal career path because it does not fit within their cultural biases.
I was very happy with the decision to implement career counselling at 21 public school once a week for pupils in Grade 10. The success of this project will inspire other schools and in turn, students would no longer have to confine to three choices that is humanities, science or commerce for their career and study path!
