{"id":629638,"date":"2026-08-10T05:59:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T05:59:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/629638\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T05:59:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T05:59:28","slug":"childrens-cute-job-hopes-look-unattainable-but-they-are-still-worth-encouraging-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/629638\/","title":{"rendered":"Children\u2019s cute job hopes look unattainable, but they are still worth encouraging \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cPlease do not cut off a fountain of inspiration for the next generation of UK scientists and engineers,\u201d wrote 200 celebrities in an open letter to new British<\/a> prime minister Andy Burnham<\/a> last week. They urged him to save the Jodrell Bank radio telescope, where many children had experienced what they called a \u201cspark moment\u201d that ignited their interest in science. <\/p>\n

I sipped from that fountain. Jodrell Bank\u2019s huge steerable dish stands incongruously on the Cheshire Plain a few miles from where I grew up. When I was about 11, I had a birthday party there. <\/p>\n

The spark did not catch. I faintly remember coming away with a pocket full of indecipherable ticker tape from one of the visitor centre\u2019s machines and shivering outside watching the dish slowly alter position on its circular rails. That was it. I am neither an astronaut nor an astrophysicist. <\/p>\n

Even had my visit kindled that dream, I would have been hard-pressed to realise it, given the tiny number of vacancies in those fields. As parents, we like to hear our children voice their cute career wishes, but at a certain point it becomes clear to them that they won\u2019t lead a mission to Mars and might have to settle for more earthbound job opportunities.<\/p>\n

A social media meme satirises these compromises with users\u2019 childhood photos, overlaid with messages such as \u201cever since I was a little boy [or girl], I knew I wanted to log into Microsoft Authenticator 27 times a day, create deliverables for key stakeholders, and boil the ocean\u201d.<\/p>\n

Now it feels as though even those humdrum dreams are in jeopardy, as artificial intelligence and geoeconomic uncertainty narrow the paths for young job hunters still further. Data released last week showed UK graduate vacancies were at their lowest since 2020.<\/p>\n

Britain sits on a trove of information about children\u2019s career expectations. The National Child Development Study (NCDS) is following some 17,000 baby boomers born in 1958, the year after Jodrell Bank\u2019s telescope was completed.<\/p>\n

Aged 11, just under 14,000 of this group wrote short essays imagining their life at 25. The most popular career they envisaged was \u201cskilled manual\u201d worker, chosen by almost one in seven of the group, then \u201cprofessional\u201d, \u201cteacher\u201d and \u201ctypist\/clerical\u201d.<\/p>\n

It is a stretch to call these dreams (though 6.4 per cent foresaw becoming sportsmen or women). The essays reflected social status and parental expectations. A few coupled what sounds like a dream with a more achievable reality: \u201cI\u2019m going to be a footballer and an electrician.\u201d <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Se\u00e1n Moncrieff: The best fighter in our school was universally feared… until he was bestedOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Nobody seems to have worked out how many lived up to their childish forecasts. But the exercise makes me wonder what today\u2019s primary schoolchildren would write. <\/p>\n

AI optimists suggest the technology will spawn many as yet unnamed jobs, offsetting disappearing roles. Younger generations could \u201cface a serious gap between their hopes for work and the reality of what is available\u201d, economist Daniel Susskind writes in his forthcoming book What Should My Children Do?.<\/p>\n

Rather than second-guessing future roles, it would be better to aim for and develop traits that will be necessary in any future job, such as a capacity for learning. Yet it is hard to imagine many kids writing that they want to be \u201ca resilient, emotionally intelligent critical thinker\u201d when they grow up, even if the education system were equipped to help them realise their dream.<\/p>\n

That open letter contains a grain of hope. Its signatories include broadcaster Brian Cox and Queen guitarist Brian May, both of whom have lived their dual dream of being rock stars and scientists. What struck me, though, was how many were not scientists, and had not studied science. They included authors, musicians, comedians and other creatives for whom AI could now open up possibilities their 11-year-old selves never imagined. <\/p>\n

We should be encouraging our children to aim for the stars, but Susskind suggests they may need to reframe their target: study law because you want to seek fairness and justice, or medicine because you want to help people live longer \u2013 not to \u201cbe a Supreme Court justice\u201d or \u201cbe a brain surgeon\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cMove into a field because the underlying problems grip you, not the traditional job,\u201d he writes. <\/p>\n

One study of the NCDS findings suggests job aspirations at 16 were a \u201cmotor\u201d that drove them to seek further education and helped them achieve higher-status jobs in their mid-30s. That suggests that, in an unpredictable world, it is less important that the spark moment lights a path to a specific destination than that it prompts us to dream in the first place. \u2013 Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cPlease do not cut off a fountain of inspiration for the next generation of UK scientists and engineers,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[74],"tags":[37363,289,42482,16609,18,19,17,82,80],"class_list":["post-629638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-andy-burnham","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-brian-cox","tag-brian-may","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology","tag-work"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117069687352599031","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}