Most career guidance experts agree that it is best to start working in this area with children 10-12 years old. By the age of 14 the student can already make the first conscious step toward his future profession: start attending elective courses and elective courses or enroll in a high school, the so-called pre-university.
Eleven years is not called secondary general education for nothing, it should give a unified base of knowledge for all. However, almost three quarters of the respondents in the Skillbox poll (73%) say that the modern school lacks career guidance more than anything else.
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov stayed in the Taganrog gymnasium for a second year. He did not get more than a B grade in Russian literature. After graduating, he entered the medical faculty of Moscow University. Already in his first year he began to publish stories in magazines. It did not prevent him from successfully obtaining a diploma as a doctor, but after three years the writer removed the sign "Doctor Chekhov" from his door.
The literary classic is, of course, not the most telling example, but formally, neither the gymnasium nor the university in his case did not cope with their duties of career guidance.
"Talent is not so much a scientific concept as an everyday one, because there is neither theory nor methods of its diagnostics. The level of talent is usually judged by the products of a person's activity," reads the corresponding article in the Big Dictionary of Psychology.
In light of this definition, how should the school help young people to find the best professional path when they are not yet talking about a professional product?
Let's look at the methodology. Point 3 of the exemplary measures of the school's vocational guidance work, after arranging the corresponding corner and creating a special school council, includes an analysis of the results of graduates' enrollment in vocational schools or their employment at the end of grades 9 and 11.
Today's school would be happy with Chekhov's graduation: he studied poorly, but managed to enter university. But the university's department of literature could have had claims against his high school: they did not recognize the nugget's literary talent, they let him go down the wrong path to medicine, they wasted public money. If schools kept track of graduates' careers upon graduation, they could compete in terms of the percentage of graduates working in accordance with their degree program. Unfortunately, there are no such statistics yet.
Let's see how things stand with the tools of career guidance work. The main thing here is extracurricular classes, in which children are divided according to the root types of professional predisposition: man-human (communication is the main focus), man-technique (engineering), man-nature (medicine, biology, agriculture), man-sign system (economics, law, exact sciences), man-artistic image (art).
Suppose the tests had revealed Chekhov's aptitude for imaginative thinking, and thus for literature. Then the classic would have been deprived of the texture for several dozen of his works. "Ward No. 6," "A Case in Practice," "Rural Aesculaps," "Typhoid," and other such masterpieces would hardly have come into existence.
The opposite case: the brilliant medical practice of a graduate of the Literary Institute named after Gorky is, of course, impossible. Still, it is difficult to say where we are dealing with the rule and where we are dealing with the exception. More often the middle story, but isn't talent important in teaching and engineering? So, if the compilers of the Dictionary of Psychology are to be believed, you can't guess in advance.
Valery Falkov, head of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science, spoke at the Council on Strategic Development and National Projects about the modernization of engineering education in the focus of its new topical areas, such as social engineering. It looks like a "one bullet" for two birds with one stone: to replace technical disciplines with psychology, as it is easier to modernize it, and instead of career guidance to run in the heads of applicants "constructor" for the labor market.
The term "social engineering" refers not to the technical sciences, but to the social sciences. It is "the purposeful formation of specific group behavior." On the website of the Bank of Russia, the term has recently been used especially often. There it denotes a set of manipulative techniques by which swindlers extort from people the passwords of their money deposits.
The economy today is solving the problems of transition to a new economic order. They require engineers with specific professional skills, capable of making out-of-the-box solutions. So why drag applicants into the social sciences, indulging the unreasonable demand for economics degrees.
Another example of social engineering, from Aldous Huxley's dystopia:
"Even a cow knows how to carry a child; we cannot be pleased with that. Above this we predestinate and adapt, shape. Our babies are unbred, already prepared for life in society - as alphas or epsilons, as future sewage workers or as future..." He wanted to say "chief executives," but corrected himself in time: "As future hatchery directors.""
With such an approach, there would definitely be no problems with aligning the structure of budgetary places in universities with the preferences of applicants. "The plans of the party are the plans of the people," as they used to say in the USSR. Fortunately for schoolchildren, however, rumors about the omnipotence of social engineering are greatly exaggerated.
It is best to ask university professors about the quality of school career guidance. And they do not complain unanimously on forums about problems with individual educational paths for first-graders. Universities are worried about the low overall level of basic knowledge of the school curriculum. Representatives of different types of professional predisposition equally need a basic understanding that the Earth revolves around the Sun, not vice versa.