The celebrity chef has generated headlines recently by saying that the youngsters of Britain are “wet” and are not prepared to work hard and therefore have become almost unemployable. Had anyone bothered to ask any secondary school teachers in the last five years, they could have found that out far quicker, but celebrity chefs sell magazines/newspapers and teachers don’t in the media I suppose, unless they are incompetent, and that’s another story.
Youngsters today are being accused of being under their parents’ wing until well into their 20s, with Oliver claiming that he has parents of young people phoning in to say that their child is unable to attend work because they are being worked too hard. But is it all the fault of those young people?
The answer is “No”. In modern education young people are not allowed to fail. The grades for GCSEs go down to G, with each one being seen, in some circles, as being a pass. If they are unable to achieve a grade in maths and English they sit what is called a “Entry Level” qualifications, which many of the general public would laugh uncontrollably at if they saw it. All youngsters must leave school with a qualification of some sort or other, and then the pressure to attend further/higher education is pretty great, where the colleges and universities are funded based upon the numbers of students they have on role, no matter what the standard. One can’t run courses on thin air and good will after all.
The whole system is broken and developing a culture where if you can’t be bothered to meet the deadline, someone will either do it for you or you will be forced to come back in your free time (and the teacher’s) in which to complete an acceptable piece of work. Schools cannot afford to allow students to fail for fear of upsetting Ofsted or their league table position, but perhaps that’s what all schools need to do, and that is make deadlines actually deadlines.
If the young people of Britain are being encouraged to be lazy during their school/college life, why are they going to change when they reach the big wide world of employment? They aren’t, they expect to get what they want, when they want, like what happens at school (and possibly home), because teachers have no choice – everyone has to pass, whatever it takes.
Until the mentality of education in Britain changes and young people end up with what they deserve out of their school careers, nothing will ever change and those entering the job market will remain “wet” and under their parental wings.
An article in a Sunday broadsheet today had various quotes from unemployed twenty-somethings bemoaning the fact that fellow youngsters from other parts of the EU are taking all the jobs, but those jobs are too low paid to even worth considering. Lots of people moan about economic migrants in this country, but if it weren’t for them the country could well grind to a halt. The youngsters of Britain need to realise that you don’t walk out of education and into a £40k per year job, you will almost certainly have to graft for a bit first. The trouble is that grafting is hard work, and that’s where it all falls down – they don’t learn to work hard in school, because they can get what they need by expending a minimal amount of personal effort.
Not all youngsters are lazy, be reassured, but I reckon the percentage of those who are lazy is on the increase.
After all that typing, I may have to have a lie down.
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