When children actually choose their careers, according to the research
Children’s career aspirations are largely formed by age seven and change very little by seventeen, according to the OECD’s 2020 report Dream Jobs?. Fewer than one percent learn about their chosen job from someone visiting their school, according to Education and Employers’ 2018 survey of more than 20,000 primary school children. Formal careers guidance in most systems begins at fifteen or sixteen, which is roughly a decade after the decisive inputs have landed. What the OECD found The OECD published Dream Jobs? Teenagers’ Career Aspirations and the Future of Work in 2020. It reported that the career aspirations of seven-year-old children are already shaped by gender stereotypes and by social background, and that these aspirations show little movement by the age of seventeen. The finding is about persistence rather than about ambition. Children are not failing to aspire. They are aspiring to a set of options that was fixed early and never widened. What Drawing...