One
of the modules I’m teaching this trimester at UWS is Career Development Theory,
examining the theories that explain how and why people make career decisions. A
career decision I often wonder about is “Why would someone choose to be a
careers adviser?” I’m not being flippant; I see few reasons why the media
representation of the role would influence anyone to become one. From the
outside, it’s not a job that gets good press.
There
is a heck of a lot of bad-mouthing of the careers profession and its purpose,
the occasional high-profile media story (nobody mention Mary Poppins) and then
there’s the section in every celebrity life story ever: “They told me to/not to
do it, the clueless adviser, and they were so, so wrong.”
We
know that high profile TV programmes boost the profile of certain
careers. CSI led to a raft of wannabe forensic
scientists. Call the Midwife and One Born Every Minute respectively give young people a
dramatised and fairly realistic view of the midwifery profession. Some TV and
film influences lead to slightly less realistic career ideas; one of our
student careers advisers was asked by a client recently for information on “how
to become a spy.”
We
talk about the importance of role models in career development. The only positive role model
for the job of careers adviser you are likely to meet is the adviser who you
encountered when you went for careers advice yourself.
For
a long time I’ve been on the lookout for careers adviser characters in fiction.
I asked my students at the start of this trimester to add to my fledgling list.
Here’s what we have found, in searching for careers advisers on TV:
Skins
Writer and comedian Josie Long plays a college careers adviser in both
televised episodes and webisodes of the show. Apologies for the link being
subtitled in French (unless you are a French-speaking reader of my blog) but
Channel 4 block the original. Further apologies if you are of a delicate
disposition when it comes to swearing.
Compilation 1
Compilation 2
When
I showed this to my class, we laughed along at how absolutely perfect this is
in demonstrating exactly what a careers adviser doesn’t do. I'd hope the tv audience were laughing with the profession
but I suspect it’s more geared towards laughing at it, and furthering
misconceptions.
Fresh Meat
Here
we have the character of JP (played by Jack Whitehall) seeking careers advice on how to
be a spy (see above!). In this clip the
adviser comes across pretty well, certainly better than the character seeking
advice. I think careers advisers will see slightly too many things ringing
true in this interaction than might be expected by an independent viewer.
Bad Education
In
the final ever episode (titled: The
Final Banter) we get this insight into aptitude testing and job matching software.
There
is a definite trend here. Perhaps I should have introduced the preceding
section as “Channel 4 and their ‘awareness’ of the profession.” I am finger
pointing at Channel 4 a bit here, but at least they acknowledge that careers
advisers exist. Perhaps more important than these efforts are the omissions. I
did find mention of a Mr Sibley, a careers adviser in a 1970 episode of classic
BBC sitcom Please Sir, but aside from that, as far as BBC tv is
concerned, careers advice is invisible.
Let’s
consider the schools that don’t bother with careers advice. If Channel 4 are
all for giving us a ribbing when it comes to careers advice then at least they
acknowledge our existence. There wasn’t a careers adviser in the BBC prime time
school drama Waterloo Road.
There wasn’t a careers adviser in the long running tea-time school drama Grange Hill. Actually Channel 4, I take
it back: there wasn’t a careers adviser in Teachers. There wasn’t even a hint of a teacher with a careers
remit.
Then
there are the soaps, watched by millions and filled with day-to-day occurrences
like explosions and murderous love triangles and angst-ridden teenagers worried
about their lives. Yet these are also filled with people doing jobs, finding
jobs, losing jobs and getting new ones. Do we see a careers adviser helping
them through this?
A
quick sweep of fiction doesn’t offer up much else. If we consider the fact that
most people across the globe have read Harry Potter, then we need to consider
how many people have the Hogwarts guidance model in their minds when they come
to see an adviser. Yes, there’s a bit of career guidance in Harry Potter. Harry
gets a few minutes in his fifth year, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which is
summarised here. It’s far from how
we deliver statutory CIAG and career education within Scotland, but then
Hogwarts isn’t really going to be subject to government education policy, is
it? We’ll let you off Ms Rowling, but it’s still not helping in giving young
people a skewed idea of what to expect from careers advice in school.
In
secondary school exam text classic, A
Kestrel for Knave (AKA Kes) Barry
Hines includes reference to a woeful careers office in the school. Let’s remind
ourselves that this was written in 1968 and hopefully is taught as a historical
piece now, if it is still on school reading lists.
It’s
fair to say that careers advisers on TV and in fiction seem to be there mainly to be the butt of a joke, or
they don’t exist. And yet most of these fictions are targeted at our biggest
client group in the guidance sector: adolescents and young adults. Is careers
advice in fiction only noteworthy if it's terrible? Are writers deterring
people from valuing and seeking person-centred guidance from those best placed
to deliver it?
What
do we need? We need good publicity. A documentary: where the general public get
to see careers advisers doing their work day to day, with clients from every
walk of life. We need to be seen on TV, in books and on film. It’s not as if
the role doesn’t exist, it’s been there since stories began and is clearly the
role of donor in folklorist Vladimir Propp’s well-known Morphology of the Folk Tale. Every hero needs a helper, or someone to send them on their way
in life with a greater understanding of the world around them and how to
operate in it. We need fairy godparent-like careers advisers, not the
misdirecting, bumbling and inept few we’ve been granted thus far.
If
anyone can find me any other careers advisers in film, television, theatre of
fiction then please get in touch!
***
UPDATES***
01.05.17
A character in The Only Way is Essex visits a careers adviser in Season 20, episode 16. Thank you to Liza and Louise, two of my current students for spotting this one!) [
LINK] A rare sighting of a straight-faced, client-centred careers professional!
17.07.17
It's eighteen years old, but another one to thank my students for: Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends,
Season 2, Episode 5 includes a trip to see some careers advisers in New York. Start from 5 minutes and 20 seconds in if you can track it down on Netflix, Amazon Prime or similar!
