This week we attended my daughter’s Future Directions evening at school. The aim of the evening was to try and give them information on all the options available to them in Years 11 and 12 to take them forward to their chosen career path. Maybe a prerequisite for the evening was that you needed to have completed Year 10 to actually have a Scooby what on earth was going on!
The pressure on these young adults to know what they are supposed to want to do with their lives in terms of a career choice at the age of 14/15 is phenomenal. They obviously haven’t witnessed us a family changing plans for the weekend multiple times all before Wednesday! Why should the kids know what they want to be doing with their lives at 40 whilst they are still at school? How many of us ‘adults’ did this? How many of us grown-ups are still looking for our passion, our direction, our fulfilment as we bumble through our responsible years?
Now I know that Australia (as a whole) enjoys over-complicating everything – try buying a mobile phone and then come back to me - but this bombardment of information took things to a WHOLE new level. After a ten minute lecture on how an ATAR score is actually calculated, it felt as if my grey matter were oozing out of my ears! Does it need to be this complicated? Really? They flew a space craft to the moon in 1969 with less algorithms than is required to calculate scaling!
I left the evening more confused with the options available than I was prior to the information session; if that was the outcome they were aiming for, then they aced it.
Highlights of the abbreviated (only in terms of language – we were there for over 3 hours!) evening included:
- WACE (Western Australia Certificate of Education)
- TICS (Tertiary Institutions Service Centre)
- TAFE (Technical and Further Education)
- TEA (Tertiary Entrance Aggregate)
- SCSA (School Curriculum Standards Authority)
- LOTE (Language Other Than English)
- WASSA (Western Australian School Curriculum & Standards Authority)
- SAE (Standard Australian English)
- ACSF (Australian Core Skills Framework)
- OLNA (Online Literacy and Numeracy Assessment)
- NAPLAN (National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy)
- VET (Vocational Educational Training)
- ADWPL (WORK PLACE LEARNING PROGRAMME)
Throw in mentions of a Certificate, Diploma, Degree and I LWTL (Lost the Will to Live). Shall we LSCWC (look, say, cover, write, check) these for a test later?
I felt out of my depth; like a pensioner with a new TV – staring at the remote control with a billion functions, only wanting to see Eddie Maguire in the Hot Seat.
I know children often get accused of laziness in their trendy abbreviations, but is it any wonder when this their educational culture? I had a new found understanding of PMSL, BFF and ADHD.
In conclusion; are we any closer to picking my lovely, capable, intelligent daughter’s course direction for next year? Not really. Were we left with a headache and a small booklet of abbreviations and their meanings? Yes. Will it all work itself out in the end? Undoubtedly. Will she be working in the profession at 40 that she thinks she might enjoy now? Highly unlikely. Will that be OK? Bloody right, it will.
Life’s about the journey – not the destination.
BRB
