Career Aptitude

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.