![\"School](\"https:\/\/farm2.staticflickr.com\/1922\/44051198975_d1d3194cd3.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nMy own life didn\u2019t turn out like that. I neither became a Bank manager nor settled down at 25, but that wasn\u2019t because at any point I was offered serious careers advice other than from mentors once I was already on the path of research. It would be nice to think that schools were able to do rather better than on this front these days, but it all seems incredibly patchy. Following the 2011 Education Act<\/p>\n
\u2018responsibility for careers education was transferred from local authorities to schools and colleges, but without any associated extra funding\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
according to the introduction to a recent House of Lords debate<\/a> on the topic, introduced and championed by crossbench peer Lord Aberdare<\/a>. This shift in responsibility has led to fairly disastrous consequences for years of students in many schools. Reading the report of the whole debate in Hansard gave a gloomy picture of what has been, but more optimism about current changes.<\/p>\n
As Lord Aberdare said, with the best will in the world<\/p>\n
\u2018Teachers are not the right people to deliver careers education; most have neither the skills nor experience needed. That is why schools need access to independent, impartial careers guidance from trained and qualified professionals.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
A new organisation, set up in 2014 the Careers and Enterprise Company<\/a>, seems to be moving things very much in the right direction. Bursaries are available \u2013 although not necessarily enough \u2013to help schools identify and train their careers leaders. \u00a0Skilled help should be becoming available to the children coming through the system now and in the future.<\/p>\n
Speaker after speaker in this debate talked with passion about the importance of appropriate advice and the recent past failures in the system. Some considered the issues around inequality, inclusion and the path for those destined not to go to university. Others looked with optimism towards the future with its new structures. However, I spotted another problem starting to raise its rather ugly head. If we want to believe CP Snow\u2019s Two Cultures<\/a> are a thing of the past, that such boundaries between Art and Science have vanished in our brave new world, I see a parallel division being introduced in some speakers\u2019 minds from this debate hinging around the word \u2018creative\u2019. Creative is now used to mean something very different from what I might wish. \u00a0The overall and alarming sentiment is perhaps best captured in the brief sentence<\/p>\n
\u2018As we have heard, there is a growing need for STEM skills, but not at the expense of creative skills\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
a remark made by LibDem Peer Baroness Garden of Frognal<\/a>. Science is, apparently, not creative!<\/p>\n
This is of course not a new sentiment. William Blake perhaps was the first guilty party, with his 1826-7 engraving of Laoco\u00f6n including the words<\/p>\n
\u2018Art is the tree of life.\u00a0 Science is the tree of death\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
quickly followed by Thomas Carlyle in 1833 with<\/p>\n
\u2018The Progress of Science\u2026is to destroy wonder, and in its stead substitute Mensuration and Numeration.’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
A couple of centuries later we have the novelist Lucy Ellmann<\/a> claiming<\/a><\/p>\n
\u2018The purpose of artists is to ask the right questions, even if we don’t find the answers, whereas the aim of science is to prove some dumb point.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I wonder how many \u2018dumb points\u2019 she has benefitted from generated by ingenious and creative scientists around her.<\/p>\n
Nobel Prize-winning Peter Medawar<\/a> had it right when he said in 1968<\/p>\n
\u2018All ideas of scientific understanding, at every level, begin with a speculative adventure, an imaginative preconception of what might be true \u2013 a preconception that always, and necessarily, goes a little way (sometimes a long way) beyond anything which we have logical or factual authority to believe in.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
His views have clearly fallen on deaf ears. We are still up against the idea that scientists need to be segregated from the creatives of the creative economy (you know, people like those who design and write computer games \u00a0\u2013 not techie STEM folk of course). Who believe that our schools cannot teach creativity in science as well as in art or music (although to be fair the curriculum may not make it easy to do so, but that\u2019s not the fault of the science).\u00a0 It was reassuring to hear from Christopher Frayling<\/a> (in a private conversation over dinner last week) \u2013 former Chair of Arts Council England and Rector of the Royal College of Art no less \u2013 that he too was deeply irritated by this\u00a0 abuse of the word creative. I hope more people will speak up about this travesty of the use of our language, as well as a complete failure to understand how science operates.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t get me wrong. I believe we should ensure all our school children get exposed to the whole spread of disciplines. The government\u2019s emphasis on STEM education is absolutely part of a drive to ensure our children are equipped to deal with the world as it is, but it definitely should not drive out the richness of the other subjects. I was fortunate enough to be exposed to wonderful musical opportunities<\/a> at my school and I did 3 languages at O Level as well as History for my humanities dose. I loved most subjects (with the exception of biology<\/a>).\u00a0 Careers advice may have been non-existent in my school, but I certainly got what these days would probably be termed an excellent STEAM education (with the added A being arts). Let us push for a world in our schools that recognizes the reality not these false dualities which limit choice and imagination.<\/p>\n
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When I was at school, careers\u2019 advice \u2013 at least at my girls\u2019 grammar school \u2013 was essentially non-existent. Perhaps boys\u2019 schools did better; after all, for my generation of women, \u2018careers\u2019 weren\u2019t a matter for serious concern. I certainly … Continue reading