Parents should pay attention to cultivating their children’s ability to earn a living and become independent
Expert advice: Career planning education should be provided in advance and integrated from kindergarten to university
The high school stage is in a critical period for the formation of "three views". At this stage, preliminary plans for future personal development will also be formed.
How to carry out career planning education for high school students?
How to guide students to plan their future life based on their personal interests and characteristics?
Recently, reporters from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily interviewed Sun Hongyan, the leader of the research group "Comparative Study on Graduation Destinations and Career Preparation of High School Students in Four Countries, China, the United States, Japan and South Korea" and researcher at the China Youth Research Center, and asked her to comment on the data findings in the report and the Analyze and interpret issues related to career planning.
It is necessary to form an integrated career planning education system from kindergarten to university.
Reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily: We noticed that you have also engaged in research on youth career planning before.
This survey report shows that nearly 90% of the Chinese high school students surveyed want to do work that contributes to society, which is the highest proportion among high school students in the four countries. However, at the same time, the Chinese high school students surveyed have certain ideas about their future careers. Only more than 40%.
How do you think students can transform their ideals into clearer career goals?
Sun Hongyan: Many years ago, when we were conducting research on career planning, we proposed based on the research conclusions that career planning education should be given priority. We hope that career planning education will be consistent and integrated from kindergarten to elementary school, junior high school, high school and then to university. The education system enables students to receive career planning education with different focuses at different stages.
This is also based on the practices of some developed countries, which start vocational enlightenment education in kindergarten.
Primary schools and kindergartens in our country also have this kind of enlightenment, but it is not considered a career planning education because we have not formed a system and lack a team of professional teachers. This leads to children having no ideas about their future careers after high school and lacking career skills. Awareness and planning.
Reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily: What are the priorities of career planning for teenagers at different stages of their growth?
Sun Hongyan: Different stages should be focused on combining students’ cognitive characteristics and psychological characteristics.
If I describe it vividly, I think the early childhood stage is about planting small seeds; the elementary school stage is when green buds begin to grow; the junior high school stage is when small seedlings grow and begin to grow taller; the high school stage is when they grow into small trees. A small tree begins to take root deeply into the soil and grow to higher places; in the college stage, it begins to grow into a big professional tree, with deeper roots and more luxuriant branches and leaves.
In the kindergarten stage, it is mainly preparation for career planning education.
Through games such as "playing house", children can learn about supermarkets, hospitals, post offices, firefighters, salespersons, etc. related to occupations and workplaces, so that children can initially form concepts related to occupations in the game.
Primary school students mainly think in images and pay more attention to perceptual cognition.
At this time, it is mainly necessary to provide them with career enlightenment, through some games, stories, activities, etc., so that they can form curiosity and preliminary impressions of the career, and stimulate their interest in the career.
By the junior high school stage, students' thinking is more agile, and their thinking is more systematic, rational, in-depth and dialectical. At this time, schools and families must guide students from perceptual to rational, such as taking students to engage in career experience activities, and then trigger students' Career thinking enables students to form a career outlook through experience.
When you reach high school, you should focus on professional internships and enter the stage of simulated workplace. After all, some students may enter the workplace directly after graduating from high school.
At this time, it is necessary to use vocational internships and other methods to further confirm students' career, and it is no longer just interest.
At the same time, you must adjust your career expectations and better understand yourself, so that you can choose a position that is more suitable for you.
In addition, it is necessary to guide high school students to understand the domestic and international environment such as college entrance examination reform, university major settings, employment situation, and scientific and technological development, so that students can know themselves and their enemies.
It is also necessary to create more opportunities for high school students to have career experience. Although high school is very busy with studies, if the career enlightenment in elementary school and junior high school is not enough, you need to make up for it in high school, so that you can accurately position yourself and your career and find A career path that suits you.
At university, it is the deepening stage of career planning education. Students not only understand and understand the profession better, but also understand themselves better. They not only form professional values, but also form professional spirit and longer-term career and life plans.
Parents should adjust their education goals and focus on cultivating their children’s ability to make a living and become independent.
Reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily: The report mentioned that the proportion of high school students discussing their future employment destination with their parents is relatively small, but families also have a great influence on their children's career planning.
How do you think families can play a role in youth career planning?
Sun Hongyan: Family and parents have a great influence on children’s career planning.
The survey found that high school students believe that their parents have the greatest influence on their career choices, but too few discuss this topic with their parents.
Families must provide vocational enlightenment education to their children.
Parents should usually talk to their children about their feelings in the workplace, their views on various professions, etc. They can also take their children to experience different professions.
For example, primary schools in the United States and Canada have "career days" where parents are invited to introduce some careers to students so that students can understand the characteristics of various careers.
Switzerland also has a "Children's Day". During this festival, children can go to their parents' workplaces to experience their parents' work.
I think the most important thing for parents is to have a sense of career enlightenment and provide some guidance to their children in daily life.
Parents should adjust their education goals. Their children do not necessarily need to be admitted to prestigious universities, but they should focus on cultivating their children's future ability to make a living and become independent.
Parents should have a long-term perspective and focus on the development of their children throughout their lives.
Under this educational concept, parents can use the time after the "double reduction" to take their children to participate in labor in the community and experience different professional feelings during labor.
Parents should also use the concept of respect to understand and understand their children, respect their interests and hobbies, pay attention to their children's personality traits, behavioral hobbies, respect their children's career interests and choices, and integrate their children's career guidance into the details of family life. .
Reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily: With the development of various new occupations and new business formats, parents and children will have certain differences in their employment concepts and career choices.
How can parents face these differences when making career planning and career enlightenment for their children?
Sun Hongyan: With the development of the times, there may be a generation gap between children's views on careers and their parents.
For example, some teenagers want to be anchors, while others hope to be e-sports players in the future.
Parents should not only face up to this generational difference, but also catch up and keep up with the pace of teenagers.
These new business formats and new occupations are very attractive to young people. Parents should learn more about them and listen to their children's ideas. They should not get angry when they hear their children's ideas. They should make such topics an important part of parent-child communication.
On the basis of communication, parents can express their own ideas, which not only helps their children discover opportunities in emerging careers, but also helps their children understand possible problems in new careers or the different qualities required, etc., so as to solve their children's worries.
"Education is a stepping stone, ability is a ballast"
Reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily: Surveys show that more than 80% of Chinese high school students hope to obtain a bachelor's degree or above.
Nowadays, in the job market, discussions often arise around academic qualifications.
For job seekers, sometimes pursuing academic qualifications becomes a "last resort" choice. Without a good academic qualification, you may not be able to pass the resume test and it will be difficult to get an interview opportunity.
But on the other hand, in the workplace, academic qualifications cannot be completely equated with ability. It may be that those with high academic qualifications do not necessarily have outstanding work abilities.
How do you think students should be guided to think rationally about academic qualifications?
Sun Hongyan: Academic qualifications and ability are not absolutely antagonistic, but complementary and mutually supportive.
Obtaining a higher education may allow young people to gain more knowledge, get more exercise, broaden their horizons, etc., and therefore gain stronger abilities.
And being able to get good grades is indeed part of ability.
But this is not an absolute causal relationship. Having a high degree does not necessarily mean you are capable.
On the contrary, in the workplace we often see highly educated people who have poor hands-on ability, adaptability, expression ability, self-control ability, cooperation ability, participation ability, etc., and cannot keep up with the requirements and development of the workplace.
Therefore, as parents and teachers, we must guide students to view academic qualifications rationally. We must not only strive to get into good schools to obtain more knowledge and resources, but also pay attention to improving their abilities in the learning process.
In particular, many of the abilities mentioned earlier fall within the scope of emotional intelligence and need to be constantly experienced and practiced in the classroom and outside the campus to form a healthy personality.
Parents and teachers should also change their evaluation standards for teenagers and stop focusing on grades. When parents always talk about other people’s children’s grades, when teachers always use grades to evaluate students, it is very difficult for teenagers to think rationally about their academic qualifications. hard.
Adults should convey the correct concept of talent to children, so that children can realize the dialectical relationship between the two from an early age.
Reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily: From a social perspective, how can we not only focus on academic qualifications in talent evaluation?
Sun Hongyan: We cannot deny that academic qualifications are indeed a stepping stone to entering the workplace. Having a high academic qualification is like getting a gold brick.
But "academic qualifications are a stepping stone, and ability is a ballast."
As an evaluator of talents, we should also use complex and diverse standards to evaluate young people.
For example, parents should not only focus on their children’s studies. Although some children do not have very good academic performance, they are flexible in mind, love to communicate, and love to work. These are all advantages. Parents should see them and praise them more.
Similarly, teachers should also focus on cultivating students' abilities and evaluating students based on their abilities.
Recruitment units must also establish a correct value orientation, change the employment philosophy of only prestigious schools and academic qualifications, and select suitable people for different positions.
Scientific and reasonable evaluation standards and employment standards are a good guide.
Our country has also made efforts in this regard. For example, it requires public institutions not to restrict the recruitment of graduates from colleges, and to give students from ordinary colleges and universities equal opportunities to compete. These are all efforts to establish a scientific concept of employment and change the practice of "only academic qualifications".
Reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily: This survey also focused on young people’s future workplace choices.
In recent years, the country has also introduced a series of policies focusing on regional development and rural revitalization. What do you think schools, families and other places can do to guide young people to choose cities where they will work or even settle down in the future?
Sun Hongyan: First of all, schools are the main department of career planning education. If schools do a good job in career planning education, students can have an accurate understanding and positioning of themselves and their careers, and they will naturally choose a suitable career and place of work.
Judging from the survey data this time, Chinese high school students have become more rational than in the past, and their first choice for employment has shifted from international cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to central cities where they are located.
In the future, with the advancement of my country's rural revitalization and other policies and the development of cities, young people may be more willing to work at the grassroots level such as counties, towns, and villages where they are located.
This not only depends on policies and urban development, but also relies on young people’s accurate positioning of themselves and careers.
Secondly, adolescents’ choices are greatly influenced by their families.
Parents need to change the idea that children can only succeed if they go to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou or go abroad. They can use the holidays to take their children out for a walk, so that they can see the great rivers and mountains of the motherland and see not only the prosperity and development of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, but also the prosperity and development of counties, towns and villages. Green mountains and green waters.
When parents chat with their children, travel, watch TV or watch short videos, they should provide them with multiple choices.
The patriotic education given to children by families and schools is not only about loving big cities, but also about loving hometown, starting from loving the environment around them.
This allows young people to have the desire to work hard for their country, their hometown, and their city from an early age.
All local governments must have policies and measures to support young people in choosing careers and employment, such as creating youth development-oriented cities and friendly cities. They should regard young people as an important force in urban development and provide marriage, childcare, housing, culture, health and other aspects for youth employment and entrepreneurship. Inclusive policies and security systems, optimize youth talent policies, attract more ambitious young people to combine personal development with the development of the motherland, go where the motherland needs, and grow into a struggling generation.
China Youth Daily·China Youth Daily reporter Sun Shan Source: China Youth Daily