As we observe young kids, we see a different world. A world that we once existed in and we wish we could remain there forever. Childhood is a refreshing transition of life filled with innocence and energizing minds. Curiosity builds up in them and they seek adventure at any cost. You will see anxiety boiling in them, wanting to know more.
Young minds capture what they observe very quickly and try to copy what they see. Every human being has some actions that they have intrinsically and they do not have to be taught. For example; a child would put food into his or her mouth without being taught that the mouth is the organ in which is used as a passage of food to his or her stomach. That is nature. However, that is different from ‘nurture’ – whereby there are things that we learn or we are taught as we grow.
There are skills that we are born with which are part of nature. Every person is created with his or her own set of skills that develops into a unique career pathway. Though this does not mean the end for people who have a passion to have certain skills they were not created with, rather they have an opportunity of creating a dream career choice by nurturing the skills they want to develop.
Nurturing could be through many ways. It could be through observing, taught at school or learnt from a parent or even the environment surrounding him or her. Back in the olden days, people mostly would take over from what their guardians were doing. If a parent was a carpenter, then the child most likely would take over his parent’s job when he or she grows up. This often restricted the child’s mind from going beyond his capabilities and be more creative in other fields.
Unfortunately, we have grown up to know only a few major attractive fields such as engineering, medicine or law. Most parents are proud to see their children venturing into these kinds of fields and as such, they restrict their children to certain career choices that are already in the market. To some extent, this might be dimming the light of creativity the child once had, be it their skills or their passion in doing something.
The outcome afterwards is; young miserable people following career paths they have absolutely no interest in and workplaces filled with robotic gloomy workers, whereas it is supposed to have enthusiastic workers each pouring their skills with excellence and passion.
There are a lot of interesting career choices that could provide an excellent platform for us to display and utilize our skills, but they are rarely known. And sadly, some grow up not knowing exactly which type of skills they possess. Therefore they end up being confused on what career they could explore. This could be solved by having the kids at a tender age exploring different types of art that exist in the environment.
I once watched a series which was featuring an educational plus entertainment theme park for kids in Japan called ‘Kidzania’. The place was filled with different kind of interesting occupations whereby kids could participate in working such as dentistry, journalism and even sales and packaging. They even had receipts and coupons and it all felt like a real city filled with young workers. Kidzania has some of its branches in India, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UK and many more places in the world.
Kidzania has shown an example through which children could develop their creative minds. Exploring a different kind of occupation at a young age gives one a variety of professions and could make the kid develop passion towards one of them. And if this kid does not have that kind of required set of skills to do the job, it could be earlier solved by nurturing these skills. It is said that the west educate their kids according to each one’s skills and passion thereby growing up having specialized in that field. Therefore, I would recommend that such initiatives to be developed in the Sultanate for the betterment of our future.
Text by: Buthayna Abdulhalim Said
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