I have a friend from Grenoble, the son of Russian emigrants - after school (collège + lycée) he moved to Bordeaux and got a job at the port, a year later he moved to a flower shop as an SMM-schik, a year later he completed short courses and became someone like a manager's assistant. After two years of work, at the age of 23, he went to the representative office of SAP in a lower position, received a university education and now became an enterprise systems engineer. When asked if it was scary to make such a “gap” in education, he replied that it was scary to leave the university at 22 and not know who you are and what you want. Familiar? In general, if you are a parent or relative of a student or a student himself, you are under cat. However, everyone else is also a good reason for nostalgia.
Prologue - where did this article come from
Scattered articles about education, the need for a diploma, graduate school and other aspects of education have repeatedly appeared on Habré - it’s not for nothing that there are hubs about the educational process, career, education abroad, etc. The topic is really serious, especially in the conditions of a greatly changed labor market and requests for specialists. We decided to summarize our experience, asked for help from a specialist who gave people 8 years of education, 25 years of himself, including school 🙂 and 10 years in the IT field. We have prepared 5 articles that will be published on our blog.
Cycle "Live and Learn"
Part 1. School and Career Guidance
Part 2. University
Part 3. Additional education
Part 4. Education inside the work
Part 5. Self-education
Share your experience in the comments - maybe, thanks to the efforts of the RUVDS team and Habr readers, someone on the first of September will turn out to be a little more conscious, correct and fruitful.
School: old song about the main thing
Groupings
On average across the country, a school is a very interesting element of education, especially now. Completely different worlds crossed in it:
- teachers of the old formation, at a very respectable age, for the most part not ready to accept new realities and forms of education, not ready to listen to students;
- young and rather indifferent teachers from the 90s, when, with rare exceptions, they went to the pedagogical university out of desperation and the inability to enter another university (due to the level of training or lack of money);
- parents with a range of ages from the 70s to the 90s, that is, from people of the USSR way of life to reckless representatives of the so-called "lost generation";
- children aged 15-17 (we will mostly talk about them) are children of the digital age, automated and computerized, introverted and virtual, with their own thinking and a special organization of the psyche and memory.
All 4 groups are fighting among themselves and groups against other groups, within such a community there is a lot of misunderstanding and the invisible hand of the main and authoritative educator - the Internet. And you know what I'll tell you? This is very good, it just needs a special approach. And I will also say that the conflict of generations is eternal, like the laziness of schoolchildren, only the scenery changes.
What problems do students experience?
- Knowledge is completely divorced from practice. The school curriculum does not provide information in conjunction with practice. That is why you can meet questions about whether a programmer needs mathematics or what programming language to choose in order to bypass mathematics issues. While using the same algebra, you can touch on the problem of neural networks, machine learning, game development (think how cool it is to find out that your favorite heroes of the game world move according to the laws of physics, and each trajectory is described by a mathematical formula). Merging theory and practice within the subject could increase the student's interest, overcome boredom in the classroom and at the same time help in primary career guidance (which takes place in grades 6-9). At the same time, it is not necessary to require an expensive material base, a desire, a board and chalk / marker are enough.
- The real level of knowledge does not correspond to the grades in the diaries and certificates. The eternal problem of cramming, encouraging and demotivating with grades, rivalry leads to the fact that schoolchildren are chasing the cherished figure, and parents and teachers encourage this race. It is not surprising that in the first year of a university, excellent students slide into triples in higher mathematics, and three students keep a strong 4 - they have an understanding of the subject, and not a jagged part that flew out immediately after the exam.
- Free access to informationactually a big problem. No need to memorize, search, analyze - just open Wikipedia or google and that's it, the information is in front of you. This is bad, because the memorization function is really reduced, the correct educational basis is not formed. The very basis that teaches you to grasp the problem, find the missing puzzle and then use the reference book or the Internet. Simply put, by constantly google, the student does not learn to understand what exactly needs to be googled. Meanwhile, it is the primary educational basis that forms the basis of a future career, serves as a platform for the skills of analysis and synthesis.
- Unnecessary knowledge in school There is. Probably, the teacher reading this post will now want to find and tear the author to pieces, but the steeper the school, the more, sorry, bullshit is stuffed into the curriculum. From the game that I happened to meet: 4 years of Latin, 7 years of foreign literature (with a deepening), 4 years (!) of life safety, 2 years of philosophy, as well as various literature, Greek, the theory of physical culture, the history of mathematics, etc. Of course, general erudition, school championships on “What? Where? When? ”, The ability to maintain a conversation is priceless and even very pleasant and useful, but in such volumes, hours of classes take away the student’s brain from subjects that are specialized for him and from the most important part of general education (look at modern spelling, but at least on the same Habré!) . There is a way out: to make such subjects optional and without grades.
- Challenging pace of education - a question that has been standing since the beginning of the existence of schools and the solution of which is very difficult to find. In the same class, even “strong” or “weak”, students have a different pace of mastering the material, solving problems, different speed of “buildup”. And in the end, you either have to go to leveling and lose the potentially strong, or score on the weak and make them even weaker. I had a student who did an excellent job of solving problems in mathematical statistics, but did it very slowly, because. he was looking for the best way to solve, optimized the solution. As a result, out of five tasks, he managed to solve three. What do you order him to put? That's the same. Meanwhile, you can find a small workaround: giving the strong more tasks to solve on their own, giving them the right to mentor and train their classmates under the supervision of a teacher - this significantly increases responsibility, reduces the fear of mistakes and allows students to demonstrate the basics of teamwork.
- The problem of socialization - a painful and serious problem that drags along a dozen others. The virtual environment of communication, game interactions, social networks and instant messengers take away from children (yes, they are children under 18, children, and after, alas, children) the ability to communicate and social interaction. No problem solving skills, no teamwork, no relationships within a group of people, nothing - a peer-to-peer social network, simple conversations. And here the task of the school is to show how cool the “person-to-person” system looks: to arrange team games, organize communications.
How to choose a profession?
Until now, in most schools in Russia (in Moscow the situation is better), the career guidance of schoolchildren comes down to essays on the topic of the future profession and not entirely adequate career guidance tests, some of which come down to an approximate determination of the student's inclinations in one area or another. At the same time, such specialties as bioinformatics, informatics in medicine, etc. are not discussed. - that is, demanded and promising areas for versatile and advanced guys. Schoolchildren themselves remain primarily children, romantics and dreamers. Today they want to treat people or serve in the Ministry of Emergency Situations, tomorrow they want to be an entrepreneur, and in a week they want to be a programmer or an engineer who builds cars of the future. And it is important to listen, think about what the reasons for the choice are - in the charm of Dr. House, the charisma of Elon Musk, or in the real need and vocation of a young man.
How to evaluate a profession?
perspective - this is perhaps the most difficult metric. What seems promising right now, before graduating from school and university, may turn into the most overheated area (hello to lawyers and economists in 2000-2002!) or disappear altogether. Therefore, you need to make it clear to your child and realize for yourself that there should be a base around which you can repeatedly change your specialization. For example, a software engineer who knows C / C ++ can easily enter the world of neural network development, industrial development, science, etc., but a software engineer (applied computer science) may be out of the stack in five years studied. Again, an economist with a specialization in "Financial Management" is much more promising in terms of horizontal movements than "Banking" or "Real Estate Valuation". To assess the prospect, study the list of professions of the future, look at the ratings of programming languages (if we are talking about IT), read specialized publications (for example, 15-17 years ago in medical journals, the scientific community actively discussed eye microsurgery, robots in medicine, laparoscopic manipulations, and today it is a daily reality). Another way is to look at which faculties have opened in universities in the last 2-3 years, as a rule, this is the top one that you will have time to get into.
Real yield is a simpler metric. Open "My Circle" or "Headhunter", evaluate the average level of earnings in the specialty (sometimes ready-made analytics is also available). Indexation of wages in business happens up to 10% per year, in the public sector up to about 5% per year. It is easy to calculate, but do not forget that in N years there will be an adjustment for the depth of demand, a change in the landscape of the sphere, etc.
The rate of development and career growth for each area. Moreover, it is not everywhere and should not be romanticized: sometimes it is better to move horizontally, learn a new specialty and work not on the record in the work book, but on the real level of earnings (which is fraught, but more on that in the next series). The main thing is to convey to the student that he will not immediately become the boss, he will have to work hard, and a real pro sometimes costs more than his boss.
Progression of Growth and Professional Evolution is an important continuation of the previous metric. A professional learns continuously, until the last day at work (and sometimes even after). Therefore, it is necessary to correlate the student's inclination to learning and the requirements of the desired profession (for example, a boy dreams of becoming a doctor, has 5 in chemistry and biology, but is lazy in learning - this is a signal that he may have problems with professional development in the future), but do not get hung up on this: often after graduation, an adult is happy to study and continue his education, and at school there was not laziness, but hatred for burdensome history and boring geography.
What to consider?
When choosing a profession, you should help your child, but not decide for him (I guarantee you will not receive a “thank you”). At the same time, it is important not to miss a single detail and, perhaps, even look at your close, dear person a little from the side, strictly and objectively (relatively speaking, the ability to twist your booty under Lambada is not yet class B in ballroom dancing, no matter how much you want it ).
- General child tendencies - this is the very basis of career guidance, which we talked about above: "man", "nature", "machine", "information systems". There are no people without inclinations and some vector of wishes for their future, so it is important to recognize which mechanism prevails. Even generalists have certain shifts in one direction or another. Pay attention to what the student says, what subjects and why it is easier for him, what he focuses on in a conversation, whether he has algorithmic thinking, how developed logic or imagination is. Moreover, such an observation of involuntary reactions is much more accurate than tests, because a student of 13-17 years old can easily guess how to answer in order to get the result he wants at that moment and deceive the system and adults 🙂
- Student wishes it is necessary to take into account and encourage, maybe even let him “get sick” with a dream of a profession - this way he will be determined faster. In no case do not turn him away from the choice, do not expose the profession in a negative light (“all programmers are nerds”, “a girl has no place in the automotive department”, “ha ha, psychology, you yourself are crazy, will you treat divorcees or something”, “taxi driver? Yes, they will kill you ”- based on real events). If possible, let the child try the specialty, or at least part of it: arrange a job for the summer, ask for help related to the profession, ask friends to take a job for a few days. If there is such an opportunity, it works simply flawlessly: either cooling and disappointment sets in, or delight and approval in plans for the future.
- Family Features we can’t leave out our difficult terms: if the whole family of civil engineers and a daughter from childhood distinguishes concrete grades, knows the thickness of reinforcement, distinguishes types of masonry and at 7 years old can explain how heating works ... this does not mean that the construction company is waiting for her, no , but you should not expect falling in love with Akhmatova and the early works of Petrarch, this is simply not her environment. Although there are exceptions. However, nepotism should not put pressure on the student, force him to become someone, because his parents are like that. Yes, your benefit is obvious: it is easier to train, help, get a job, etc. But the benefit is yours, and the life of your child, and probably the choice of the dynasty does not suit him.
It happens that parents are sure that their child does not want anything, has no aspirations and inclinations, does not seek to choose a university, does not think about the future. In fact, this does not happen, there is always something that you like - you need to start from this. If you think that there are real difficulties, talk to teachers, listen to their advice, contact a social psychologist who is engaged in vocational guidance for adolescents (there are very cool private traders - about them below). My classmate has a 15-year-old daughter, a very early child, her mother is an inert housewife without education, and she looks at her daughter as if she were “not wanting anything”. The girl served delicious coffee brewed with her own hands, gracefully folded the napkins, offered the Anthill cake, which she herself had made. - Kat, don't you think that she should try herself as a confectioner or work in a cafe? - What are you, she's not a plebeian to serve everyone, I'll make her go to an accountant. A curtain.
What should a student know about the profession?
When you are a schoolboy, you always try to hide the true motives of your behavior or choices so as not to appear immature or driven. Therefore, it is very difficult for parents to figure out where the craving for a particular profession came from, especially if it is sudden. Yes, and you should not do this, it is better to convey certain rules of the game.
- Any work includes a share of routine (up to 100% of all work) - the student must understand that, along with some desired or visual attributes, he will receive many routine tasks, the implementation of which can make up most of the work: the programmer does not write entire programs ( if he is not a business owner and not a freelancer), but works on his part of the code; the doctor is obliged to fill out a mountain of papers, even if he is an ambulance officer or a surgeon; an astronaut trains for a long time, studies a lot of things and in space must complete a huge number of tasks, etc. You need to understand that there is no profession without such specifics, you should not romanticize work.
- Work is the daily work of a specialist. If you connect your life with some profession, then with a high degree of probability it will be forever: every day, with a short vacation, bosses, Mondays, difficult subordinates, and so on.
- Fashion and the prestige of the profession may change - and before he graduates from high school. And then there will be two ways: to change qualifications or become the best in the profession in order to guarantee demand in the labor market.
- You can’t transfer your attitude towards a person to your attitude to the entire field of activity - if you like a profession because your dad / uncle / brother / movie hero owns it, this does not mean that you will feel yourself in it just as comfortable. Each person must choose what he likes and what he is ready for. Examples can be, idols should not be.
- The work must be liked, its components must be liked. Each work is divided into several components: the main activity and its goals, colleagues, work environment, infrastructure, "customers" of the work, the external environment and its relation to the activity. You can not accept one thing and refuse everything else, deny the existence of external factors. To work well and be satisfied, it is important to find positive things in all of the above components and, when turning off the alarm, know why you turned it off now (for what, other than money).
- A long journey begins with a chain of small steps - you cannot immediately become great and famous, experienced and guiding. There will be mistakes, reproaches, mentors and rivals, the first steps will seem inconspicuous, tiny. But in fact, behind each such step there will be a breakthrough - the foundation of experience. There is no need to be afraid to walk or rush from work to work for insignificant reasons: the stone is overgrown on the spot, and the walking one will master the road.
- The beginning of a career is almost always boring - no one will entrust a beginner with complex interesting tasks, you will have to approach everything from the periphery, from the basics, learn, master, repeat some terribly boring things every day. But it is thanks to the mastery of these things that the young specialist is able to dive into the deep foundations of the profession. This boredom is inevitable, so you will need to learn to find some fun in it.
- Managing money is also hard work. This is the thesis our parents definitely did not convey to us, and we are somehow far from it. It is important not just to earn or even save, it is important to be able to manage money and be able to live on the amount that you have in this period of time. This is a valuable skill, which, among other things, teaches you to respect your professional ego and skill, not to work for a penny, but also to adequately name your price.
It turned out to be such a slightly philosophical section, but this is precisely the support of the student's career guidance from the parents, the first rudiments of his self-respect as a future specialist.
What and who will help?
Career guidance is a process that determines the rest of life, so you need to rely, among other things, on third-party methods and on the help of professionals.
- Private Career Guidance Specialist - a person who can really find the most hidden aspirations and abilities in a child. Often these are not just social psychologists, but practicing HR specialists through whom hundreds of applicants pass and they can soberly assess what your child is ready for and what horizons you should count on.
After working with a career guidance specialist - the same result!
- Introspection: you need to determine what you really like, what you are ready for (the same routine), what you don’t like, what you are not ready for for any encouragement. It is best to write it down on paper and save it so that you can return to another iteration later. Such a table will help to understand at the intersection of which skills the profession should be.
- Map of suitable professions - write down all the professions that, for some reason, suit the student, discuss each one, highlight the advantages and disadvantages, correlate with the possibilities of entering the corresponding university. Thus, one can limit oneself to several directions and reason in terms of further professional development (for example, the professions of a videographer, programmer, automotive engineer and sea captain remain, among them there is one vector - technical specialties, communication with some kind of equipment; it is already possible to study the prospects of each profession, assess what it will be like by the time you leave the university etc. Although the spread is still very large).
- school teachers are important observers and witnesses of your child's growth, sometimes they can see what parents do not notice. In fact, they see the student primarily from an intellectual point of view, they see his potential as a future specialist. Talk to them, discuss the issue of professional development, their observations can be a truly significant factor.
When you collect and collate this data, it becomes much easier for you to determine how to help a teenager choose his direction.
This is a classic career guidance diagram, from which it is clear that a successful career will develop at the intersection of desires, opportunities (including physical ones) and labor market needs.
But we liked her other variation - you can't argue!
How to grow an IT specialist?
If a teenager (and even better a child under 12 years old) has certain abilities for logical thinking, algorithms, an engineering view of things, do not miss the time and pay special attention to some things:
- books, namely books, in computer science and mathematics - firstly, these are necessary subjects, and secondly, your student will get used to working with professional literature; in professional life, a good programmer rarely does without books;
- circles on robotics and programming - mentors in a playful way will teach the child basic algorithms, functions, concepts from the IT field (stack, memory, programming language, interpreter, testing, etc.);
- English - you need to learn the language very seriously, take care of the variety and depth of vocabulary, the conversational component (from communicating with peers in applications and via Skype to studying on holidays in foreign language schools or camps);
- about robots and constructors at home - now there are programmable robots in any price segment, it is important to analyze homework together with the student, deepen knowledge;
- if you are also ready to tinker with Arduino and captivate a teenager with this, then everything, the job is almost done.
But behind gamification and enthusiasm, one should not forget about the fundamental foundations of physics, mathematics and computer science, they simply must be present in the life of a student with a craving for development (and indeed any educated person).
Study - we must not forget about it: question-answer
Of course, even if you have provided career guidance for your child from the first grade and are confident in his future, this does not mean that you should abandon your studies at school and focus on one thing.
How to teach "profile" subjects?
Exceptionally in-depth, with the use of additional literature, problem books and reference books. The goal of training is not just to pass the exam well, but also to come to the university prepared, with an understanding of the subject and its place in the future profession.
How to treat non-core subjects?
Within the framework of a reasonable and personal ambition - to teach, pass, write control, do not spend too much time on them. Exceptions: Russian and foreign languages, they are specialized for any specialty, so pay special attention to them.
How to work with additional load?
Problems of increased complexity and the Olympiad are the beginning of a career, without exaggeration. They pump thinking, teach to focus on short distances and solve the problem intensively, give the skill of self-presentation and the ability to win / take a hit. Therefore, if you want to enter a particular university and a teenager has really developed career expectations, it is worth taking part in olympiads, conferences, competitions of students' scientific papers.
At the same time, health should be above all, this is an important point that parents forget, but children do not yet realize.
Should I go to technical school after 8/9 grade?
The sole decision of the parents and the student himself. There is nothing wrong with education according to the technical school + university scheme, there are even more pluses. But learning is somewhat more difficult.
Should I change the school to a specialized one?
It is advisable to change - so the student will have more chances to pass the exam for a high score (well, the same story with the entrance exams, if they return everywhere in the future - the chance is still higher). You should not be afraid of psychological trauma, a change of team has a great advantage: a future student will recognize some of his classmates and classmates much earlier, and this greatly contributes to adaptation at a university. But if a teenager cannot be directly torn off and the school world is the most precious thing, of course, it’s not worth tearing it off, it’s better to devote time to additional classes.
University selection factors?
There are a lot of factors: from moving to other cities to the internal features of the university, it's all very individual. But you should pay attention to the bases of practice (if you don’t have one in mind), the degree of language learning at the university, the main scientific profile (scientific laboratories), the presence of a military department (to whom this is relevant).
When to start working?
This is a big question - is it worth it to start working at school, and the answer to it is also individual. But, in my opinion, it is worth trying to work in the summer between 9th and 10th, 10th and 11th grades - purely in order to understand how interaction in the work team works, how responsibilities are distributed, what degrees of freedom / lack of freedom exist. But in the summer of admission to the university, there is an excessive amount of stress and workload - therefore, I enrolled and have a rest, the more, the better.
In fact, this topic can be talked about forever, and it requires a deeply individual approach. But it seems that if every parent listens to at least some points from the article, it will become easier for schoolchildren to choose their future profession, and mom and dad will be able to avoid the accusation “I didn’t want to go to this university, you decided for me.” The task of adults is not just to feed their children with fish, but to give them a fishing rod in their hands and teach them how to use it. The school period is a huge foundation for all future life, so you should take it responsibly and follow the three main rules: respect, guide and love. Believe me, you will return a hundredfold.
In the next series, we will go through five / six corridors of university courses and finally decide whether we need it or “maybe to hell with a diploma?” Do not miss!
Greedy postscript
By the way, we forgot about an important point - if you want to grow up as an IT specialist, you should get acquainted with open source projects at school. This does not mean that you need to contribute to the largest developments, but it's time to start sawing and cherishing your pet project, putting theory into practice. And if you have already grown up and you lack something for development, for example, a good powerful go to - We have a lot of interesting things.
Source: habr.com