I have mentioned the fact that the last three days' relative inactivity here has had much to do with taking time off to do the final university taxi run from Leeds for my elder son, and to go walking with him on Ilkley Moor.
We did, of course, reflect on what he thinks to have been a great three years, despite Covid. And I can see enormous changes in him, and massive leaps forward in his ability, of which I am proud for his sake.
That said it's an odd experience to watch your child wondering how to set out on a working life when you happen to be of an age when I am quite often asked when I plan on retiring (never, I hope). I have mused a little on what I might have done differently if I had bern starting now.
I seriously wonder if I would now have planned to go into one of the formal professions, as I did back in 1979. When I became a chartered accountant it was a boring licence for security for most. It was also, as I saw it, an opportunity for entrepreneurial opportunity, both commercial and social, and I placed my hopes on this second dimension. Does it provide that opportunity now? I am not convinced.
Like all the professions, ever tightening regulation; enhanced expectation unmatched by reward; and most importantly, the sheer human impossibility of meeting all the multiplicity of simultaneous demands made upon the new practitioner seem to me to have reduced that opportunity for innovation, creativity and personal expression which I sought within my chosen profession.
I fully accept that I might be looking back with hindsight, imagining a better world than the one I actually witnessed. But the evidence of professional burnout across so many professions appears to suggest that this is not just me rewriting the narrative after 40 or more years. The trend is real, and depressingly so.
Professional life is not, I think, as attractive as it was, and in no small part because the role of the expert has been diminished. That's partly a politically driven, societal attitude. And maybe it's also, in the case of accountants, the consequence of professional firms failing to do their own jobs properly, with obvious consequences. Whatever it is, I am not convinced the entrepreneurial younger me if relocated to this moment would have seen a professional qualification as important in the way that I did in the late 70s.
The person would not have changed though. Presuming my interests, and my desire to pursue my interests through work, would be the same what would I do now, facing this very different world? I suspect I would have combined my interests in writing (very much in existence at 21), media, social change and politics into seeking training in social media.
We are a world that now consumes media, and which is willing to pay for it. Young people are very aware of this. I see and admire those willing to take risks in this area. It seems to me that this is where opinion is both now formed, and is changed. It is also capable of being sustainable (again, an unchanged concern since I was 21).
Would I have had the gall at 21 to try something on my own? I doubt it. I think I knew my education was not complete then. But equally, the whole process of learning has changed so much now. One of the fascinations of working with the late Mark Cooney, who I made videos with, was to watch him carving a new career based on learning from YouTube videos. Of course some rough edges remained as a result, but he worked continuously to remove them. He was an inspiring entrepreneur as a consequence, intent on creating both the media and the message, and unworried about the boundaries between the two.
Is that what I might have been tempted to do? I think so. I might have wanted to fill in all the gaps I now have in my knowledge on the media I use, and make that knowledge my skill set to deliver the change I want in the world, just as I wanted reform when I was 21.
I would have missed out some other skill sets. But maybe in the light of where we are going as a world that is a trade off I would and happily could have made.
And even saying all that has me thinking. My retirement is a long way off…….
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I suppose if like me you are able to commence taking your pension payments and continue working in different ways whether full or part time, paid or pro-bono, or a combination of all, then that’s great and useful.
As a, now retired, teacher I share your concerns about how ever-increasing constraints have impacted on all professions. I’ve heard similar stories from friends in other fields from medicine to law. Certainly, I wonder if I would have wanted to embark on a lifelong career in education with such heavy demands in terms of constrictive “box ticking” and the lack of freedom to innovate, working in what is effectively becoming a privatised public service.
The 1950s, 60s and 70s now seem, in spite of all their undoubted problems, like a “golden age” of opportunity and optimism (or maybe it’s just me turning into a nostalgic old fart!). Nevertheless, I worry about the future of our professions, and how individuals working inside them will face an uncertain future and even open hostility from our government.
The hostility is the killer
Look at the grief lawyers get for doing their jobs
That’s the sick joke isn’t it, the hostility from a government composed of people with negligible intellectual and moral integrity or ability. Backed up by their shrieking supporters in certain sections of the media.
Attacking lawyers for doing their jobs, experts for pointing out factual truth, and other professionals like doctors and teachers for pointing out the intolerable strains their sectors are under thanks to the tories’ austerity agenda and utter incompetence.
Bill, I started teaching in 1968. Sometimes I go for a meal with former colleagues from the school at which I taught. The organiser calls it the Old Friends Club (his son disrespectfully calls it the Old Farts Club). We had the discussion if we would go into teaching if we were starting out today. The consensus was probably not. Few waited until 60 to get out. I left at 59 feeling burnt out.
We hear the things we used to -school plays which involved scores of kids, Saturday morning teams, after school clubs-seem to have died so they can spend more time chasing grades.
After teaching I worked part time as a counsellor for a charity and we had a local govt. contract. I heard the same sort of things again and again. It seems to apply in nursing as well as teaching and local govt. I don’t have space to give all of them but they include:
targets which appear to be set by people who have never done the job
if they are achieved, then more is expected
praise is rare or formulaic
Staff numbers are capped or reduced while the work load increases ( and some who can’t cope are sent for counselling. I eventually told one client , he wasn’t sick, the system needed therapy. He reported me -and they told my charity. They didn’t want me seeing any more of their people. Didn’t even want to hear my side of it, even though I had helped their staff for ten years, sometimes seeing people at short notice and doing some good work.)
Other things include
detailed records are required and results judged by the paperwork
the actual job seems to be second to the paperwork, little of which seems to serve any purpose. Professor Paul Hoggett , formerly of the Univ. of the West of England, and who was also a psychotherapist, put it ‘it seemed to me that shame was the way they tried to discipline an educated work force.’
He added , ‘the private sector is de-regulated, while the public is micro-managed’.
Ivan Horrocks some years ago referred to people he taught, being increasingly afraid to speak out and challenge the narrative preached by the management -mission statements, etc !
I have the impression that most people don’t ‘believe’ but go along with it as promotion or even tenure depends on it. As an historian I can recognise similarities with the old Soviet Union.
Without honest feedback from the ‘shop floor’, mistakes get perpetuated. Galbraith said the case for capitalism is that it is informed from the bottom -or words to that effect.
It is like there is a cult of management to which we must pay homage.
My dream is that one day the staff stand up together and say, ‘that’s bullsh*t. We are not having that anymore.’ Like Nicolai Ceausescu who, you may recall, was giving his usual speech and they started booing, He realised that he had lost it. Then change took place.
If I were 21 I wouldn’t be reading your blog and commenting.
But I am not.
🙂
Thank you for an inspiring thread.
I’m 56 and work in the public sector. I’m losing staff to better paid employers and I am considering a move myself driven by the the complete horlicks senior – and highly paid – management are making of it. To be honest they’re taking the mickey – some orgs are just so top-heavy (like mine) yet we are crying out for staff to actually do the job.
I have found over the years that one has the ability to arrive at a confluence of interests and abilities eventually, but that there is also always room to learn more.
To me, to stop learning is to stop living and to die.
As we get older there is this expectation that we become ‘experienced’ which to me means a solidification of knowledge – we know what we know. But keeping your mind open to new things is what is important as much as what you know, because if not, you’ve sort of stopped growing with the knowledge around which changes.
One of my middle grandsons was into animals of all sorts in a big way as a lad. He kept terrapins, tarantulas and 3 sheep and their lambs, some of which they ate. He was determined to be a vet. Then, for odd circumstances, he was sent on scolarship to a posh private school. There he met with the sons of rich people, way above the means of his parents. He was taken on holidays with a rich mans son, to Hong Kong where he ate those ridiculously expensive Japanese beef steaks in top-of-tower posh restaurants, etc etc. He quickly became intereted in money and decided he would become a financial trader. Then Covid hit and stopped him going to university. So he has been going to the Alps in the snow season and working in the kitchens while doing his snow-boarding – which he does extremely well. He has become a chef, though without formal qualifications. He is a pleasant intelligent young man. He told us at the weekend that he would like to go to university but is seriously wondering if it is worth the £75,000 that it would cost him.
Norman, there’s always the Open University, one of the Labour party’s greatest achievements. Whenever I hear attacks on Harold Wilson’s time as PM, I always think of his championing of it as an achievement few British politicians can boast of; certainly not the worthless rogues now in charge of us. Has he thought of getting a qualification through that rather than the traditional route?
He could work and study at the same time. Of course working then studying, typically, in the evenings or at the weekends is not easy. It takes self discipline and self sacrifice, and and an ability to plan.
But if I managed it, I’m certain he could. And cheaper than other universities too.
Good idea….