I shared last week that our focus in our family isn't on career aptitude. We don't help our children choose a career at age 12 and then custom steer their high school years for that specific job. I find this ironically funny and entertaining because it's something that I wish my own public education would have done for me when I was in high school. As a STEM (before STEM was a thing really) student in calculus, I often said that I couldn't wait to go to college so that I could stop having to take useless classes that had nothing to do with Engineering (my chosen profession). It turns out that wisdom comes with age.
Learning is a free man's privilege. The mere fact that our children can focus on learning instead of having to work exclusively in order to put food on the table makes them very privileged indeed. What do they do with this privilege? Focus on learning only what they need in order to get a job? Does that seem reductionistic and insulting to anyone else?
Education is more than a career, but our children will still have to work as adults to put food on the table. While there is plenty of time for them to learn the specific skills and knowledge necessary for a career later, exploring career skills in middle and high school offers a pressure-free environment with time to explore multiple paths. So, if your son knows how to learn, on what else should he focus?
He should learn to work.
Working with our hands is an important extension of the creator God in humans. God created the world and we also work to create. Skills like building, plumbing, wiring, cooking, baking, sewing, driving, farming, repairing, and machining are just a few options. Find an apprenticeship for learning some new physical skills, or join a club for learning communication and team building skills. These are what we see as career aptitude: Skills we explore and practice in addition to our rigorous studies. Career focused skill building does not replace our free man's education, but rather complements what it means to be reflecting the true Creator.