Why 40% of Indian youths don't have role models for the profession they aspire to take up
The latest Annual Survey of Education Report (ASER) - which focused on youngsters in 14-18 age group - revealed that 40 per cent youth do not have any role models for the profession they aspire to take up. The options seem to be restricted to the armed forces for boys, and teaching or nursing for girls.
Most schools fail to provide career counselling to their students. Some "good" private schools do hold such sessions, but generally most - both private and government - schools refrain from informing about career options that different subject streams can offer and at different stages of education.
Given the society we live in, where livelihood is a major issue, every child who joins school, is being asked the quintessential question: "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
The answers are necessarily job-oriented so one is expected to come up with, "I want to be a doctor, an engineer" and so on. Without actually knowing what exactly it entails vis-à-vis aptitude, education, fee, scope or even work-life balance.
Children, therefore, create images of careers in their minds as early as perhaps seven or eight years of age. And many a time these ideas about career do not change even as they grow older. On the contrary, they only grow more concrete.
When the pressure to perform and commit to work comes so early, it's surprising that schools do not address these anxieties about career choices at all. And those few that do, perhaps do it very late.
All schools, government or private, should have yearly discussions with children from every class. Give them a comprehensive idea about jobs that are available, about entrepreneurship opportunities as well as workforce gaps.
Most children develop ideas about a career based on what they see around them. This leads us to the role model aspect that the ASER survey highlighted. We would need to understand further what are the professions these young people eventually take up?
Most, the report said, were involved in agrarian work with their families or otherwise. Then, do we have role models in agriculture? The only ones we had were the kisan netas, but they took to politics and so are not highlighted in school textbooks. Of course, there was Verghese Kurien, who helped create the Amul cooperative movement. But that’s about it. The farmer is not portrayed as a role model for livelihood or his traditional knowledge or as the hand that feeds the country. We don’t even have an equivalent of Prince Charles in India who champions the cause of organic farming.
Despite various craftspersons and folk artists being honoured and awarded by the government, they are neither showcased as role models nor their work is being seen as a viable career opportunity. There are absolutely no role models for children to be entrepreneurs. They might learn about an Azim Premji or Chanda Kochhar, but their backgrounds are distinctly different.
Children need role models they can relate to or identify with. The latest Padma awards is a brilliant acknowledgement of the work of the grassroots workers - something that the young children will not only associate with, but will also aspire to be. But their life stories and their work needs to be duly highlighted in schools either through books or documentaries. Only then would it go a long way in providing not just role models, but alternative career and entrepreneurship options for these schoolchildren.
There are also people like young entrepreneurs who gave up their lucrative jobs to follow their dreams, people taking up dog-walking as a career, setting up puncture repair shops, florist corners, car wash centres, river rafting hubs, and so on. But are these stories being presented to the children? Well, not really.
In the industrial sector, the largest section of youth is absorbed in fields like the IT, telecom, healthcare, infrastructure, retail or manufacturing sectors. But where are the role models in these sectors? As companies which wish to recruit the best, should they not be highlighting their own workforce and their jobs as career options for the youth?
It’s only the Army that does career marketing, no other public or private sector shares career options with the youth. Doordarshan used to telecast a programme by the UGC on career development. I'm not sure if it is still being aired, and even if it is, I'm again unsure if it reaches enough audience, given the early morning slot it had.
How would a child in school, who might drop out in the eight or the ninth standard, then know of which career to take up and how to get there?
In the absence of information dissemination, there is little surprise that the professions that the youth are likely to take up will not just be without role models, but also without explanation of what the job will entail, in terms of skills, salary or career growth. Our youths will continue to stumble their way into jobs that are neither of their interest nor are they equipped to handle. But surely they will continue to hang on to these jobs as their only means of livelihood.
Is it not then not our responsibility to help children find their aptitude, show them the means to acquire skills and support them to find these careers?
For a country, which has the largest youth population, we need to be more devoted to every aspect of our children’s growth, to ensure that this demographic dividend is well utilised and the abilities well-channelised.