Overachievement and the Price We Pay Pt. 1 || Juvenile Achievement

Clearly, there is a large pool of students (the majority) who are “just achieving” or even “underachieving” but that’s not what we’re talking about and one set of problems does not invalidate another. Furthermore, the more overachievers overachieve is the steeper the gradient of what Sir Ken Robinson calls “educational inflation.” The overachievers set the bar and the higher they raise it, the harder it is for anyone to achieve anything at all and that’s a big problem.

So, with that disclaimer and, at the risk of still sounding elitist and irrelevant, let’s talk about the struggles of overachievers.

Ashley gets mostly A’s and an occasional B but she’s really struggling and failing in Math. Ashley’s mother graduated top of her class—valedictorian, 10 extracurriculars, Head Girl, the works—and Ashley cannot be anything less! Getting less than straight A’s is a reflection on her mother, it is a waste of her mother’s investment of time and money and it makes more real the possibility that Ashley will not be successful in life. She’s heard it all before.

Darrien’s father gets his report card from school. He doesn’t even look at Darrien’s average, which is a high B. “You placed 10th in the class? How? What do those 9 people have that you don’t have?”

Zanielle is an A+ student, active in extracurriculars both inside and outside of school, well-read and an absolute perfectionist. Zanielle’s brother goes to a school where merits are awarded freely. You get a merit just for answering a question correctly in class. By the end of the school year, Zanielle’s brother has 15 merits on his report card and, by some stroke of luck and a lot of hard work, Zanielle has 6—all because of that one teacher who actually believes in giving merits, but of course, not without effort. Zanielle earned those merits and she was proud of them but her dad says, “Why couldn’t you get as many merits as your little brother?”

Those are slightly altered versions of real-life experiences that students have shared with me. They highlight the root cause of a lot of children‘s overachieving and perfectionism — parents.

Now, I have no intention of villainising parents. No blame games here. In fact, although I have many students who don’t, all of the students in the scenarios mentioned above have pretty good relationships with their parents. Most days, Ashley even considers her mother to be one of her closest friends. None of the parents mentioned above is a bad parent. They do not push their children to overachieve because they are cruel but rather because, at the heart of it, they’re scared. They have cultivated a mindset of scarcity and fear. They believe that this mindset is realistic and that they have a right to push their child and to view things the way they do and, if I really stand up and step into their shoes, I might be inclined to say they’re right.

These parents live and work in a world where resources are limited. College places are limited. Opportunities are limited. In the working world, good jobs are limited, positions of responsibility are limited, honor is limited and, in the minds of parents, and eventually their children, all of these things are related. All of these things hinge on one thing—success in school. Scholastic success is like currency: the more you have, the more you’re worth and the greater your chances of exchanging that currency for success in the real world.

This has been a frightening reality in my teaching experience. Burnout, once a term used to describe frazzled corporate executives, is now a phenomenon with which high school students are far too familiar. By the penultimate year of high school, they’re done, spent, exhausted. Their performance starts to decline and that just leads to more pressure from parents and some less than understanding teachers.

Karelle was an unusual case. She was always quiet but she was smart. She got high B’s in my class and sometimes A’s. In one exam session, a teacher thought she was cheating—which she wasn’t and would never! The teacher confiscated her exam paper, told her she wouldn’t be allowed to finish and that she would get a zero for that exam. Karelle thought about how that zero would cause her average to plummet. She couldn’t focus on anything else. This was her first paper for this exam season and after that, she did not attend any more exams. She couldn’t. She saw all she had worked for all her life in school going down the drain just like that and she snapped. There was no coming back. She was never herself again.

Karelle’s situation is special because Karelle’s parents never really put pressure on her to overachieve. The pressure always came from Karelle herself. It is important then to note that even if parents are not pushing their children to fit into a narrow mould of success, there are still extrinsic factors like social media, the school system, other students and even teachers and administration that can make students feel forced to meet or even exceed a certain status quo.

In the Jamaican school system, students are typically required to sit at least 8 subjects in their secondary school exit exam, CSEC. Some of these subjects they choose and others, like English and Math, tend to be compulsory. However, in the midst of rising uncertainty in the job market, limited spaces at colleges and sixth form programmes and limited opportunities for scholarships, some students just want to do a little extra just to push themselves over the edge, ahead of the curb, just to secure their space in the world, just to be sure. So some students will sit 9 subjects. Other students find loopholes and start sitting 10 or 11 subjects. It has metastasized to the point where the students who I work with who are sitting 9 and 10 subjects are the norm, while the students choosing to sit the required 8 are now considered average or even low achievers. Coupled with that, they participate and multiple extracurricular activities and reach out for positions of responsibility and even make time to volunteer just to secure their space in the world, just to be safe, just to be sure. This is the educational inflation we were talking about.

So what are the repercussions?

• Poor mental health and self-destructive behaviours

• Stress and burnout

• Comparison which leads to endless competition, jealousy, discouragement, low self-worth and envy

• Strained relationships between parents and children

• Aversion to failure and inability to learn from mistakes

• Narrow definitions of success — definitions that do not prioritise happiness or health

• Dishonesty / loss of integrity — students, parents and teachers cheat or cut corners to get ahead

• Productivity loss and increased inefficiency

In South Korea, the Suneung exam which students need to sit in order to enter into college, is being more and more criticized for bearing these repercussions. Over the years, Suneung has become ever more taxing on students because the pressure is high in the work world. Unemployment is rising and one of the best ways to stave off unemployment is to get accepted into one of the three prestigious “SKY universities.” Since it’s only three universities and students and parents are constantly upping their standards, the competition is getting more and more intense. But even graduating from these top universities is no guarantee that you will get a well-paying job or any job at all and that takes an even greater mental toll on students.

Here’s an excerpt from a 2018 BBC article:

Dr Kim Tae-hyung, a psychologist working in Seoul, says: “Korean children are forced to study hard and compete with their friends.

“They are growing up alone, just studying by themselves. This kind of isolation can cause depression and be a major factor in suicide.”

Globally, suicide is the second leading cause of death among young people, but in South Korea it is the number one cause of death for young people aged between 10 and 30.

The country also has the highest levels of stress among young people aged 11 to 15 compared with any other industrialised country in the world, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Dr Kim says the pressure in Korean society to go to a good university and get a good job begins early.

“Children are feeling nervous from a very young age. Even first-year elementary students talk about which job pays the most.”

More and more, this is becoming a reality in many pockets of the Caribbean and I’m sure, in many other places.

So how did we get here? Maybe after the Great Depression, maybe after the 2008 Recession. I couldn’t tell you.

The bigger question is: how do we solve it and how do we recover?

My honest answer: I don’t know.

Saying “just do your best and don’t compare yourself to others” can sound like a farce because the world is going to compare you to others so you have to protect yourself. Prioritizing happiness and health sounds like a fairytale in the midst of rising global uncertainty. It’s hard to tell parents and children to focus on happiness in a dominant culture of scarcity because it takes cash to live and the truth is that a certain minimal standard of living is necessary for happiness.

Even though I don’t have all of the answers, here are some things I know to be true:

• Students need emotional security at home. They need to know that the love of their parents is not based on their how successful they are in school but that they will be supported and loved whether or not they are high achievers.

• Children need strong work ethic from home. Teach them how to do chores at home and do them well. Involve them in problem solving at home and teach them financial literacy. Training them at home will help them to do better in school. Moreover, the training they get at home will teach them skills and life lessons that will prepare them for the adult world and will prove more valuable than anything they could learn at school. (Take it from me!)

• Students need to be allowed to fail and learn from it. No browbeating. No name-calling. No comparison to anyone else. Just: Where did you go wrong? What could you do better next time? When and how do you plan to make these changes? Done. Move on.

These tips will help to build emotional, social and mental resilience that will truly help them to be prepared for life in the midst of any circumstance.

What I know is this: We can’t control the world but we can control the qualities we build in ourselves and our children to cope with the world. Packing more and more pressure on students to achieve in preparation for an uncertain job market is like adding layers and layers of raincoats on a child in preparation for possible heavy rains. If it doesn’t rain very hard or doesn’t rain at all, the child is resentful that they had to spend all that time being hot and sticky and uncomfortable and probably developed heat stroke in preparation for something that never even happened or wasn’t even as bad as people made it out to be. If it does rain however, no matter how many rain coats they have on, it will only be a false sense of safety. They can’t just stand there in their many raincoats. They need to learn how to navigate the puddles, how to find shelter, how to keep moving despite the rain, how to turn the rain into an opportunity. Pretty soon, they realize that the raincoats barely mattered and they probably should have focused on learning the skills to handle rain instead of cloaking up to hide from it when it came.

No plummeting job market, no low employment, no high cost of living can overcome a child who has been trained to be a confident, self-sufficient, self-assured, resilient, responsible critical thinker. That training starts from the home and that training is deeply rooted in unpopular wisdom and unconditional love. That child, when they face unemployment as an adult, will be more likely to work odd jobs, turn to entrepreneurship and seek out help and advice until they make it. That child will make better decisions, decisions that will help them to be truly successful in every sense of the word.

The Model School for the 21st Century — An Ideal System

In many ways, the education system of today still looks a lot like it did decades ago, besides the addition of computer technology, obtrusive security cameras and maybe a few more cars on campus. Everything in the world around it has changed and will continue to change drastically, while education, as a global system, remains largely untransformed, which leads me to wonder what future are we really educating children for?

While true education begins at home (that’s another article for another day!) there is much that the school system can and should do in adding value to the education of young minds and creating confident, competent, astute and employable candidates for the adult world.

But it’s not going to be as easy as some minor tweaks. It’s going to take a complete overhaul. As educational expert, Sir Ken Robinson championed, what we need is not reform but revolution.

Here are the systems and skills that would make 21st century education truly worthwhile:

  • Apprenticeship — The only thing students leave high school capable of doing is being students. But what if apprenticeship was a foundational part of a student’s learning experience from the time they enter high school? Students would get experience in the working world by shadowing a professional in a particular field, seeing how they work and even getting a chance to do some of the things, not as a one-off opportunity, but as a fundamental part of their education. Learn more about this idea in my previous article, Apprenticeship and Internship as the Future of Work and Education.
  • Immersion and Content-Relevance — A key part of why apprenticeship works is that students are immersed in an environment where they can apply what they are learning in school immediately as they learn it. The modern education system is predicated on the idea that what you learn now, you will apply years later. That does not foster true meaningful learning. That is not how the human brain works. Students need to see immediate, repeated and useful applications of what they learn in school. If I catch some water in my watering can with the intention of watering my plants next week, then by next week, when I return to the watering can, I’ll find some of the water there but most of it will have evaporated. That’s how knowledge works too. The longer you wait to use it is the more you stand to lose it. And then, as adults, students have to learn a lot of the fundamentals all over again and then what were the 16 years of schooling for?
  • Clear paths defined early — Students need to see where this whole education thing is going so put them on a career path early. Instead of letting them pick subjects in school, let them pick careers and stick to them for a while. You might be thinking, Won’t that limit their options, boxing them into careers so early? What if they hate it and they get stuck? Clearly, they would be allowed some flexibility, maybe pursuing a new career each academic year or sticking to one if they truly feel that it’s a good match. However, the truth is that the sooner they are exposed to career fields in a sustained way is the sooner they can truly decide which one truly fits and the less likely they are to make poor hurried decisions at the end of high school and end up stuck in a field they hate for the rest of their adult life simply because of bad information.
  • Career exposure — Annual Career Day is not enough. Students are confused and limited when it comes to career choices. Even the most brilliant and capable students finish high school and university bewildered as to what to do with their lives because liking or excelling at a subject in school does not necessarily mean that you will like it or excel at it as a career. Furthermore, the world has so many careers to offer but many students continue to be caged into the various subdivisions of the doctor-lawyer-Indian chief narrative. Internships and apprenticeships can help with this but there also need to be career talks that are more targeted and more regular than just once a year. Check out the first episode of my Miseducated Career Guide Series here.
  • Working together across age groups — School is the only time in our lives when we are limited to working only with people of the exact same age. In the real world, there are no age barriers. They certainly don’t exist in the workplace. Even children, when they are not in school, play, work and build relationships with their siblings, cousins and neighbours who differ in age, so why are classrooms divided by age? This, I believe, is one of the root causes of ageism and generation gaps that create barriers to growth and change in the workplace. The alternative multi-age classroom has been shown to have innumerable benefits to students’ learning autonomy, interpersonal skills and critical thinking ability.

  • Integrated studies — Yes, there is a subject in the Jamaican primary school system known as Integrated Studies but that’s not what we’re talking about here. When I listen to economists on the news forecasting the next economic downturns I think, “Wow! They’re such great historians!” Yet, in school, we treat economics and history as discrete fields, neatly package them and call them “subjects.” But there are no subjects. These divisions are arbitrary and artificial. There is only one subject and that is life. All these other fields are just avenues to learn about that one all-important subject. Yes, subject divisions make it easier to hire teachers, to create timetables and to shuffle students from one class to another throughout the day but it does not serve to build the critical thinking and problem-solving skills we are so desperately longing to foster in our children. Interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary learning are not ideals. They are a need. The world is full of wicked problems, so inextricably intertwined that the roots are invisible. In the real world, there are no divisions and once we teach students to see that economics is history and geography is science and biology is chemistry and literature is physics is music is art is life, then we will start to see the “wicked solutions” we so long for.
  • Highly qualified passionate and well-paid facilitators — We cannot raise education to the next level if we do not raise educators to the next level. Read that again. Find out more about a bottom-up approach to a good education system in my article, Adding Value to Education from the Bottom Up.
  • Basic adult knowledge and skills — Building a résumé. Creating a career portfolio. Filing taxes. Mental health education, emotional hygiene and coping skills. Driving. Basic entrepreneurial skills. Cooking. Home gardening. How insurance works. Investment. Kitchen gardening. Basic home repairs. Basic car repairs. Communication skills. How to act in an interview. Sound health and nutrition practices. How to establish an online presence. Brand building… and the list goes on. Like I said, education starts in the home so I’m not saying all of these things need to be taught in school. But somewhere between birth and the time a human enters the adult world, the things they are actually going to need to know for day-to-day living should be taught.
  • Civics — It is a relic of a Jamaican education that I never met but I have heard many people in my life sing its praises. By all indications, it really seems like something worth revisiting. There is so much talk about molding children into decent humans, teaching them to be good citizens and yet, we got rid of the one subject in school that was solely devoted to doing just that. Now might be the time to bring it back, no?
  • Tailored syllabi focused less on information and more on skills — In a world where students can access bucket loads of information right at the digits, shouldn’t we be more focused on teaching them how to sift out the irrelevant, how to think, how to synthesize, how to manipulate information and other requisite skills for navigating the modern world? If they can access raw information anywhere, whenever they need it, do we need to spend 8 hours a day 5 days a week loading them up with content? Brains are not buckets. Brains are builders.
  • Dynamic syllabi and infrastructure that change with the times — The world is ever-changing. In their content, their organizational systems and their physical infrastructures, schools need to be designed in an agile way so they can move as the world moves. Multi-purpose spatial designs, multi-purpose time slots, flexible syllabi — that is the future of education.
  • Critical thinking — It’s been the biggest buzzword in education for the past decade. It’s the central goal of every single educational reform programme in the world right now. But the big question is: How do we do it? How do we get students to think critically? The answer is simple: get students to solve real-world problems as a regular part of their daily life. Well… how do we do that? That is not as clear-cut. It looks different wherever you go. The good thing is it is what underpins a lot of the ideas we’ve discussed previously — the dynamic syllabi and infrastructure, the focus on skills instead of content, integrated studies, apprenticeship opportunities and the like. It’s not far-fetched. We just need to open our minds to the revolution.

  • Minimal focus on ranking and grades — I see how it destroys them and there’s no real case for how it benefits them in the real world. The Scandinavians and other Europeans have been seeing great success by pursuing this learning style. Maybe the rest of us could give it a try, even incrementally.
  • Respect the arts and other non-academic disciplines — We need art. There! I said it! We need it! Art and artistic careers are not going anywhere but students who hold on to their creativity in school often have to fight for it. Students who want to pursue something “non-academic” like a hands-on trade or skill have to fight for it. They have to fight teachers and students and a vast world of adults to view it as valuable. But the arts are valuable to all of us. And integrating creative arts and skills training with learning can even make the learning process more fruitful. As famed psychologist, Dr. Brené Brown says, “There is no such thing as creative people and non-creative people. There are only people who use their creativity and those who don’t [and] unused creativity is not benign.”

I don’t have all the answers. I don’t even have all the questions. What I have are facts and lived experiences and informed opinions. What I know for a certainty is that the way we continue to do education will not sustain us. We need the revolution and we need it now.

If you have any revolutionary ideas I have not mentioned here, I would love to hear them. Please leave a comment or email misseducationja@gmail.com.

Miseducation Reversal

Hello, my name is Khadijah and I’m miseducated.

Now, didn’t that feel great? So you’ve admitted you have a problem. Now what?

I tell my students all the time: once you’re done with this school thing, make sure you go get yourself an education.

Here are 10 ways you can go from miseducation to re-education on your own time:

1. YouTube: Yes, the YouNiversity of choice—the holy grail of modern learning needs no introduction or explanation. Eat your heart out.

2. Short courses: Many are free online but there’s no harm in paying for a good course, whether online or in your area, that will contribute to your personal or professional development. It’s an investment. Just make sure the course and the offerer of the course are high-quality and legitimate.

Here in Jamaica, you can find short courses that can lead you to a career at the Real Estate Training Institute, the Face Place, Heart Trust NTA and the Jamaica Civil Aviation Authority, just to name a few.

Other institutions include the UWI Open Campus, UTech, Edna Manley College, UCC, MIND and the Media Training Institute. Udemy, Google Digital Garage and FutureLearn are some reputable online sites. iTunesU is pretty limited but you can still find have meaningful learning experiences with one of their recorded courses where you can learn at your own pace from some of the best lecturers in the world.

3. Online talks, lectures, conferences and webinars: Recordings from TED, Talks at Google, SouthBySouthWest (SXSW) and any other conferences or webinars available live or recorded in your area are great learning opportunities. Clubhouse talks are my latest go-to for dynamic live online learning. I tried MasterClass recently too and it’s been life-changing.

4. Networking opportunities: People are a great source of education. Some of the greatest gems I have collected in life have been from having fun chats, business meetings and even soul-searching conversations with people in my personal network.

So put yourself out there and expand your circle. Listen twice as much as you speak. And really really listen.

Anything that comes out of your mouth is something you already know. Anything that goes into your ears is an opportunity to grow.

5. Get a mentor / become an intern or apprentice: It’s easier said than done. Not everyone is willing to offer their time and expertise freely. But maybe it doesn’t have to be free. You could offer yourself as an intern or apprentice so that your mentor feels that they are benefitting as well and you learn even more that way.

You could even find a mentor online whom you may not even know personally. Just by watching, reading and listening to their content, you could learn a lot. Be sure to get mentors for different aspects of your life. For more on this, read my article on the value of interning and apprenticeships here.

6. Volunteering: Meaningful volunteering opportunities that truly promote growth and development are not always easy to find. While serving food to the poor, volunteering at a children’s home or helping out at an infirmary are valuable opportunities to build empathy and learn useful life lessons, they are not readily available options in a world that has shifted online.

Moreover, sometimes, we want volunteer opportunities that will help move us in the direction of our career goals, expand our networks or teach us new skills.

For that, one site I have discovered recently is Catchafire. It’s a global virtual service that matches volunteers with people and companies who need their services. Why not give it a try?

While you’re at it, enter “Volunteer Opportunities Online” in a search bar to see what other options are available in your area. Almost any business you could think of would accept your voluntary services so locate one you’re interested in and then just ask.

7. Travelling: Yes, it sounds luxurious and maybe out of your reach but you’d be surprised to find that it’s not. You might be able to travel on a scholarship or win trips by entering competitions. If you’re working, you can save towards it.

You can have memorable travel experiences even in your own country. The benefits of travel for personal mental and emotional growth are underrated. For information on how to have great travel experiences on a budget, check out Goody on a Budget and Adventures from Elle.

8. Journalling: You’d be surprised at how much you can learn from your own mind. I journalled every day of my life on my phone for a year and a half and it both changed and saved my life. Sometimes, by just seeing your thoughts concretely in front of you, you find insights you would not have been able to grasp when the thoughts were just swirling around in your head.

9. Seeing a therapist: I think everyone should see a trained therapist at least once in their life. We can never truly see the world as it is; we only see the world as we are. The more we raise our levels of intra-personal intelligence is the more we increase the clarity with which we can see the outside world.

It might be a little costly but if you’re doing it just once, plan for it and view it as an investment in yourself.

There may also be opportunities for free therapy in your area, especially if you’re in college or high school. Ask around.

10. Reading: Well, this isn’t new. Books are a traditional but still effective way to learn more about the world and even about yourself.

My advice: don’t let anyone tell you when, what or how to read. Set your own reading goals. Read what you like, whether it’s business books, children’s books, poetry, self-help, travel books, anything you enjoy.

And by the way, never let a book hold you hostage. If you’re not liking it, you have no obligation to finish it.

Of course, you don’t have to explore all these options and certainly, you won’t explore them all at once but dip your big toe in the pool of true education.

In many ways, our education system has failed us but the world is still ours for the taking. Gary Matalon once said very simply at a high school careers rap, “There’s learnings to get from everywhere.” Go get it.

The Importance of Guidance Counsellors

Reading not your thing? Listen to the article here: https://youtu.be/PYUzc3sLHCw

Anna, a 15-year-old girl is raped by someone in her home. However, she spends countless hours of her school day running away from the one person who would be most qualified to help her, the guidance counsellor. 

“I don’t want to see her, Miss,” she says to me, almost in tears. “I don’t want her to find me. Hide me, please!”

Why this frantic desperate plea?

Anna is not her real name but this story is absolute truth. Anna spent an entire year in hiding. She had revealed her situation to the guidance counsellor who, as duty demanded, immediately reported the incident. However, after baring her truth to the counsellor, Anna found her to be no comfort and felt more vulnerable than before. Furthermore, Anna did not wish to testify against her rapist in court and the counsellor hounded her day by day trying to convince her to appear for the trial, threatening that if she didn’t, the police would come and take her to trial bodily.

This case broke my heart. While I decided not to fume until I got the other side of the story, especially because the counsellor in question was my colleague whom I knew and respected, I could not help feeling a small tinge of visceral rage at the injustice of this student whom I cherished dearly firstly having the right to her body stripped away by wicked hands, secondly, being forced to relive and rehash this trauma in front of a room of strangers and thirdly, feeling caged and hunted in her own school, a place that should have felt like a haven, a home away from home.

I am sure the guidance counsellor was doing what she was duty-bound to do and what she thought was best but I questioned her methods. I mourned at the idea that a student would reject the help she so desperately needed to get a handle on her emotional turmoil because she did not find her helper, her counsellor to be genuine and approachable. And a new thought struck me. I had never noticed that students at my school, students whom I knew to have serious issues, rarely ever brought their burdens to the school counsellors. For whatever reason, I never even thought to recommend my students to the guidance counsellors.

“No one can be the perfect therapist for everyone but anyone can be the perfect therapist for someone.“

Emily Nagoski, Ph.D.

While I never went to see a school guidance counsellor in my time, I did see a psychologist when I was in high school. I had a teacher who put me on to a therapist when I was 18 and I desperately needed one, even though I didn’t know it. I hit it off immediately with my therapist. Even now, she is so beloved to me and I to her. However, I know that there are people who have to endure a lot of searching, a lot of trial and error before they find that perfect fit. One of my students, whom we will call Naila, had to be hospitalised as a result of a physical and mental breakdown caused by a prolonged battle with an eating disorder. While in hospital, her attending physician insisted that she had to see a therapist who specialises in eating disorders, the only eating disorder specialist in the country, in fact. Though this woman came highly recommended and was no doubt very qualified, Naila HATED her and thought of endless malicious things to do to her. She did not find her genuine nor did she believe her method of counselling was doing her any good. Every session was like having her teeth pulled one by one. However, her doctor forced her to see this specialist and ordered her not to see the therapist she had been seeing before, one with whom she had a very warm productive relationship. As a result, Naila had to endure these pointless painful sessions where she was not getting the help she needed.

Maya Angelou said, “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” So there are psychologists out there who know their stuff and are extremely qualified but a client can’t really engage with them unless they make them feel cared for in the way that they need to be cared for at the time. It’s the age-old Jamaican concept of “mi spirit jos tek yu.”  

Dr. Emily Nagoski, trained psychologist, author of the book Burnout and one of my personal favourite speakers, says that one of the first things she and her cohort learned when training to become counselling psychologists was this simple rule: No one can be the perfect therapist for everyone but anyone can be the perfect therapist for someone. She says she learned that most clients seeking therapy have to “shop around” visiting several therapists before they find the best fit and she says it was drilled into them very early on as psychology students not to be offended or dismayed if a client comes to you for one session and never comes back. It’s nothing personal. It doesn’t mean you’re not good at what you do. It’s all a part of the process.

That being said, think about this: in a population of roughly 1,500 students, all with different backgrounds and personalities, is it likely that all or even half of them will find that their spirit aligns with (“tek tu”) the one or two guidance counsellors there are in the entire school? And no matter how much they are going through, in the face of rape, domestic abuse, not having enough to eat or to travel to and from school, struggles with insecurity and bullying, stress, learning disorders, eating disorders and the host of other issues the modern teenager faces, they will not bare their fragile souls to someone with whom they do not have a connection, no matter how highly qualified the counsellor may be. Are we willing to have our young people carry the weight of all these woes by themselves simply because, as a people, we are afraid to take mental health seriously and to invest the resources that demonstrate that we take it seriously?

Good guidance counsellors are becoming more important than Deans of Discipline

The palpable shortage of approachable and highly qualified guidance counsellors is one of the reasons why the burden of counselling our nation’s young falls so squarely on the shoulders of our teachers. Teachers interact with students every day. They get to know them personally. And somewhere along the line, students often find a teacher who their spirit will just align with or “tek tu.” Some students have a first form teacher whom they still visit and share their problems with even in sixth form or college. They just have a connection. I have ended up being “that teacher” for many of my students. In fact, I have even ended up being “that teacher” for students I don’t even teach who just see me on campus and think that they would like to open themselves up to me. While I am extremely honoured and grateful that little people trust me so much with their hearts, sometimes I feel that I am not the best fit. I provide them with a listening ear, empathetic probing, a laugh and a warm hug (pre-COVID) and for some, that is all they need. For others though, I feel that I am only stopping a gap as these students need more time, resources and professional expertise than I am able to provide in dealing with their deep and torturous emotional pain.

So what’s the solution? As with the other myriad of problems that face our Jamaican education system, I don’t have all the answers. What I do know is this: in this age of insecurity and turmoil, of school shootings and terrorism, of children being kidnapped on the daily, of overexposure, of social media, of bullying and cyberbullying and revenge porn and all the chaos that faces our young people, good guidance counsellors are becoming more important than Deans of discipline or vice principals. We need to treat them as if they are the first line of defence in saving our children’s lives and so they have to be top-quality and it starts from the hiring process.

Here are the principles at the core of the issue:

  1. Hire a variety of guidance counsellors: Guidance counsellors need to be emotionally accessible to students; they need to be “kid-friendly.” Furthermore, there needs to be a variety of counsellors, not just 2 or 3, but counsellors of different sizes, shapes, genders, colours, personalities and backgrounds. This initiative may look different in different places. For example, in an American school where there are Latinos and Blacks, all the guidance counsellors can’t be upper-middle class White people. Students will be less likely to confide in a counsellor who does not look like them, talk like them or appear to understand their story. Similarly, in Jamaica, counsellors need to come from different backgrounds, have different personalities, dress differently, act differently, talk differently from each other so as to create a variegated pool from which students can choose a best fit.
  2. Two counsellors per school is simply insufficient: This might be ambitious in an age where schools don’t even have enough adequately qualified teachers but my suggestion is that there should be at least two guidance counsellors assigned to each grade level. This will minimize the counsellor to student ratio and will make it more likely that every student will find at least one counsellor whom they feel comfortable approaching with their issues.
  3. Free up counsellors to counsel: One counsellor colleague of mine explained to me that school counsellors are often so swamped with Ministry-mandated paperwork and classes to teach that they often have little time or energy to actually help students in the way that they would like.
  4. Ensure counsellors themselves receive adequate ongoing counselling: To see and hear devastating stories every day and bear the emotional burden of little people, to hold their secrets, to sometimes be powerless to do all that you want to do for them and to know that your own life is often in danger (at some schools) is a lot for one human — no matter how trained or qualified — to bear. Counsellors need counsellors too.

This initiative needs to be a joint effort between the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education. It would take a lot of work, time and resources but it would drastically improve our students’ functioning and overall well-being in school and in their future lives. School is a place where students should feel safe and loved and the way the school treats students’ mental health is an important ingredient in that process. While the value of mental health care is not yet fully appreciated in Jamaica, we’re getting there and we need to. Mental healthcare in schools is crucial in bringing up little people who will become fully functioning happy, healthy adults. Guidance counsellors are key partners in the big picture, in making a future for all of us that feels safe and whole and bright.

Photo credit: Counselor helping student draw her future. NPR. (https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/01/06/492874846/9-questions-for-the-nations-top-school-counselor)

Apprenticeship and Internship as the Future of Work and Education

DISCLAIMER: In this article, the terms, “apprenticeship” and “internship” are used interchangeably and simultaneously. I have chosen to intertwine these expressions because the system I am proposing in this article combines features of both. For example, apprenticeship is often tied to a curriculum, which is true in this case. However, unlike internships, apprenticeships tend to be paid and generally lead into a full-time job which may or may not be true in this hypothetical system. I’m still working out the kinks.

The only thing students leave high school capable of doing is being students. Think about it. They spend years buried in books, submitting assignments and cramming for tests. When they leave high school, the only thing they are trained to do is to study (and even that is questionable)!

The only natural funnel then is into university and, after university, many students still have very few employable skills and so, the next best thing is for them to become a graduate student. The next thing you know, they are in a second Masters or a PhD programme. Many times, we praise such students. “Look at her go! She’s rising straight to the top!” “Look at him; he’s so ambitious. He never stops upping his game!” Admittedly, many students are simply trying to stay ahead of relentless educational inflation. However, the sad truth is: ambitious and self-aware as they may seem, many of these students are simply insecure. They are fearful, confused as to how they will find their place in the world and convinced that they are not capable of functioning in the working world—and, in many cases, they’re right!

The only thing students leave high school capable of doing is being students.

We often complain that employers are unreasonable in asking candidates applying for an entry level job to have 3-5 years of work experience. With indignation, we ask, “Where are they supposed to get work experience from?” But think about it from the employer’s perspective. Often, these demands for work experience are borne out from past disappointments with candidates who were highly qualified on paper but were unskilled, incompetent and difficult to work with, despite being “high achievers.”

Employers know that time is money. They want to know that you can hit the ground running and immediately start adding value to their company. To an extent, this is still an unreasonable expectation, as each company is different and the new employee will at least need some training in the company culture, company policies and the specifics of this particular position to which they are being assigned. Many companies do not put enough thought and resources into succession planning and training of new employees and then blame it on poor schooling or inept applicants. But I digress. The point is that, despite all this, a company rightly concerned about their bottom line has every reason to expect that the candidate they are employing has some experience in doing the job that they are being hired to do.

So again, we ask, “Where are they supposed to get work experience from?” Well, couldn’t they get it from school?

Level with me for a minute. What if schools partnered with public and private sector companies to have apprenticeship and internship programmes each year? What if that was a foundational part of a student’s learning experience from the time they enter high school? What if, instead of summer schools, we normalised national summer work programmes for teenagers that are integrated into their schooling? Students would shadow a professional in a particular field, see how they work and even get a chance to do some of the work.

Apprenticeship is a rudimentary facet of human society. It was once the only way anyone learned anything. However, for one reason or another, this useful tool has been relegated almost to invisibility. Still, it holds some distinct advantages for our modern world.

  • It better aligns with the way the modern student learns. Today’s students learn by watching and doing. With online video tutorials and increased access and exposure to tools and software, students are learning anything and everything right at home! They like to watch, learn, try things on their own and produce results that they can show. Sitting in a classroom talking about the thing instead of doing the thing is becoming less and less appealing. Give us something to see, something to touch, something to do.
  • It adds to productivity in the labour force in the short-term. Duh! Free labour! In an apprenticeship or internship programme, students can initially learn valuable low-level skills and gain experience working as a small part of a larger entity. This is invaluable training for the working world. At the same time, relegating these low-level skills to trained interns and apprentices frees up time and energy for the rest of the work force to do the more meaningful big-ticket items on their agenda. For example, someone apprenticing at a law firm can take care of the menial secretarial aspects at the office, such as filing. This would allow the lawyer and the paralegal more time to do the work of preparing cases and drafting communications.
  • In the long-term, it leads to a more competent, more confident and more productive labour force. If children get even a small feel for what it is like to be employed in an organisation from the time they are in school, then naturally, when it is really their turn to step out into the world as full-fledged working adults, they won’t be as intimidated. They will also have developed many hard and soft skills that they can immediately utilise in the working world.
  • It helps students to build up their professional network. Children get to build relationships with adults who can help them access the opportunities that they will need when it is time to enter the world of work. Not to mention, the organisations get to scout out young and upcoming talent!
  • It can lead to entrepreneurship opportunities. Skills that students learn in an apprenticeship can be honed to the point where students can even begin offering these services as temps, freelancers or full-fledged entrepreneurs.
  • Students get to use their education in real-time. An apprenticeship programme that is integrated into the school curriculum would allow students to use content and skills as they learn them, instead of several years later. This would make their education more relevant, meaningful and long-lasting.
  • Students will make better career decisions when the time comes. Students today are so confused. Even the most brilliant and capable students often find themselves leaving school with a lot of uncertainty regarding what career to choose because studying something in school is one thing but actually doing it is another. Having had a taste of apprenticeship in different industries though and hearing the experiences of their schoolmates who have apprenticed in industries different from theirs, students will get a better sense of what different careers involve, what they really enjoy, what they don’t enjoy, what they excel at and what their weaknesses are.

It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that reintegrating apprenticeship into the modern world has some attendant drawbacks.

  • It can decrease productivity in the short term. Apprentices and interns are not skilled at the outset and will make mistakes which cost time and money. Skilled professionals have to take time to train these apprentices which detracts from the time these workers spend doing their actual jobs. They also often have to spend time fixing the mistakes that apprentices make or teaching apprentices how to fix their own mistakes.
  • It seems like an idea more suited for developed countries. In a developing nation where wages are low and people are eager to earn, will apprentices be willing to work for free, especially when they have to find money for food and transportation to access these apprenticeship opportunities? If they are not willing to work for free, where will the money come from to pay all these apprentices? What if, to address the productivity problem addressed above, we appointed skilled professionals in each company whose sole job was to train apprentices and interns? How would these trainers get paid?
  • It is currently perceived as an avenue for low-income professions. Yes, it is just a perception but sometimes perception matters more than fact. Currently, the only people who seem to work as apprentices are manual labourers and artisans. Teachers also participate in a kind of apprenticeship programme when they complete their practicum for their degree or diploma in education. All these careers have one thing in common. They are low-wage professions that lack prestige. Apprenticeship can be valuable for all professional classes but people just haven’t started seeing it yet. On the far end of the spectrum, one prestigious high-paying career that has always benefitted from apprentices and interns is medicine. Focusing on that angle would be a great avenue to market apprenticeship as a valuable tool and to offer it some prestige.
  • If not correctly balanced, it can be perceived as child labour or even become a cover for child labour. Proper supervisory and accountability systems would need to be put in place to prevent this. Perceptions would also have to be cleared up with good public education. Clearly, there is value in exposing children to good hard work but to what extent is it helpful and at what point does it become abusive?
  • It is not a popular idea right now. It would take a lot of selling to the relevant stakeholders because it’s an investment but once the benefits become apparent, even the sky would be no limit.
  • It may be perceived as a distraction from school work. Parents and other stakeholders may say, “When children spend all this time and energy working, what will they have left to spend on school work?” They would have to be convinced that this too is school work. It is a valuable learning opportunity that will be just as beneficial and even more beneficial to a child than sitting passively, taking notes in a classroom.

Many of these drawbacks are easily solvable. For example, my idea of the ideal apprenticeship programme is one that is integrated into the school curriculum. Students learn concepts in school and then they enter into an apprenticeship field where they can immediately apply the things they have learned. That way, students and parents are incentivised by the fact that these apprenticeship opportunities will not be detracting from their educational process but rather will be adding to it and intertwined with it. Moreover, it will not be putting a strain on their budgets which may already be stretched thin, as the apprenticeship opportunities will occur during school time so whatever money they would have spent on food and transportation for school would be simply be redirected to take them to their apprenticeship jobs.

Whether there would be one day each week, one week each month, one month each semester or one semester each year when students would be allowed to pursue these apprenticeship opportunities is left to be decided. How students will be assigned to the industries and companies in which they will apprentice is also a factor to consider. Will students apprentice in one or two industries for their whole high school experience or will they get to intern in a different industry each year? What incentives would the government offer to companies that participate in these internship and apprenticeship programmes? How would the syllabus be shaped to accommodate these apprenticeship opportunities? What would classroom teachers do during the time students are away interning? Would they maybe have apprentices of their own? They too are professionals with transferable skills after all. These and many other questions are left to be answered.

The system I am proposing is a radical shift from the way education is currently structured. It may never be realised and, if it is, it may not be realised in our lifetime. However, we can still reap the benefits of apprenticeship and internship opportunities even now, as they are still an invaluable and heavily under-utilised resource.

If you are a student, seek out opportunities to get a foot into an industry that you are interested in. Just ask. Hardly anyone will turn down free labour and some may even pay you. Whether you do it on the weekends, after school, between classes (if that’s an option for you) or during the summer and other holiday breaks is something you can negotiate with your teacher or company but there is much more to gain than you will ever lose. Whether it’s a professional white-collar job or a manual skilled job, you will learn a lot. Whether you actually end up entering this field or you decide you’re no longer interested, you would have learned something about the industry, about the world and about yourself.

For parents in particular, this is a good avenue to consider if your child seems really driven towards one particular career field or maybe does not seem particularly academically inclined. Academia is not for everyone so give your child an opportunity to explore a more practical hands-on field. On the other hand, maybe your child does have the potential to do well in school but they, like many children, just need to see the relevance of it, the real-life application. Where is this school thing going? they may ask. Show them. Show them where it is all going. It may make all the difference.

If you are an employer or anyone with teachable skills (which is everyone), seek out opportunities to share your knowledge and experience and don’t reject someone who asks for such an opportunity to learn from you. It will sharpen your own skills and you will be making a small but significant impact on the future of your work force and a palpable impact in the life of your apprentice, mentee, intern or whatever you like to call them.