Ready for It?

Monday 30.11.09

My ear was caught by a news item today. Business leaders were expressing concern that sixteen year olds leaving school were unprepared for the world of work. An assumption was expressed that teenagers should be prepared for 'the global marketplace' and that naturally, teachers were to blame.

I understand that business leaders would like to have a workforce at their disposal, fully able to make a contribution to the global market place on their behalf. A workforce of sixteen year olds is an economical and easily exploited option. The minimum wage for a young person is £3.57 per hour as opposed to £5.80 at age 22. Even these low wages can be avoided by employing the young person as a modern apprentice at £95 per week full time. I don't think that employers have any right to expect very much for that kind of money. Having watched Nina get through her year as a modern apprentice with her colleagues, it seems to me that the employer got extremely good value, was basing the majority of its staffing on the apprentices whilst providing a minimal training experience, and once they were no longer apprentices, sending them on their way to get a fresh batch in.

It used to be that young people would leave school and be employed by a small business. The employer would take them on accepting that they were only able to do simple tasks, they would learn the skills of the trade slowly, and benefit from the experience of more experienced employees. There was a butcher's boy, not one qualified butcher and twenty trainees a year. People stayed in jobs and filled dead men's shoes. Schools provided education, employers provided training. Times have moved on, but I still think that school should be about more than training up fodder for employers to make use of.

I wasn't much use to my employers at sixteen. I fitted in, did chores, and tried to keep up. It served to tell the time, to be able to read, and to add up (although my mental arithmetic improved greatly as I calculated the price of orders for fish and chips and gave change). Mr Lee didn't expect too much of me, and in turn didn't pay much. He took care of me when I was slow, or stupid, or sloppy. I did my best. It was a good arrangement. My point is that as a fifty-something year old man, he knew what could be expected of a sixteen year old girl -education or no education - it wasn't much. So now its 2009 and here's the big news: sixteen year olds are still sixteen year olds. Business has changed, they haven't.

Mr Lee honed my ability to be polite to the general public and to wipe a table effectively. Of the rest of what I became, I owe a fair bit to the bits of education that no employer ever believed useful. Aged around five, Mr Riley found me drawing a picture of a witch and took an interest in a story that I had made in my head. That was the beginnings of a confidence that I could order and express my thoughts, and the finding that there were kindred spirits out there in the world outside of my family. I got my first go on a sewing machine aged eleven at secondary school. I was rubbish, and the student teacher lost patience with me when I clogged the machine for the third time in ten minutes. I loved the idea of making something though, and this, combined with a determination to prove her wrong about my (in)abilities started me off on a hobby that is still with me. Shakespere is not much use in business. In spite of that, I can still quote from The Merchant of Venice and continue to ponder its themes. I'm not sure is it did much to shape my views on power, equality, fate, greed, religion, or love but it must have done something. At least it went towards me knowing who I was; that I was more likely to be mates with Shylock than Bassanio. I'm glad I got an education in stead of indoctrination into how to become a corporate lackey.

School leavers not ready for the world of work? Should they get lessons in office politics, dealing with difficult bosses, clockwatching? Time enough to learn those things on the job. Let the kids learn to calculate the area of a parallelogram whilst reciting William Blake. It'll do 'em good.

On a different theme, I genuinely do plan to do the Hundred Days to Make Me a Better Person project http://www.hundreddays.net/ . I will be committing to stand on a different street each day, and make a photograph of it. I hope to blog about it a bit too. I hope it will release a bit of creativity, or at least improve my geography. Join in?