They're Too Young For That!
When speaking with adults about career learning tools for children aged three and up, the most common response is "they're too young for that", as though we're about to start asking them to choose their career path then and there.
Meanwhile, kids are learning things every single day, both in the home and at school, that could be considered 'too adult' if we were to stop and really think about them.
Dinosaurs - Children learn about dinosaurs from a very young age. There are books, TV shows, films, wall decals; all of which encourage children to gain interest in these prehistoric animals.
Aren't three year olds far too young to be exposed to these animals, some of which are quite terrifying! They'll never see a dinosaur in real life so why try to teach them difficult words like Tyrannosaurus Rex when they can barely even read their own names?
But to say three is too young would be to miss the point; that dinosaurs are fun! They're colourful and exciting and if children are curious enough about them as a subject matter, their literacy will improve as they learn new words and phrases.
Food - Kids are regularly taught about things like food groups, how different meals are made and basic nutrition.
Using the previous logic again we ask why? Children rarely, if ever, have a choice about the foods they are given to eat, they don't prepare their own meals and wouldn't truly grasp the importance of a balanced diet until many years later.
Well guess what? Food is fun! There are so many different varieties of fruits and vegetables of all shapes, colours and sizes, and a huge number of ethnically distinct dishes can be made with them. Once children realise how diverse food can be, it opens up an entirely new avenue of education with regard to the world and the people who live in it.
Poetry - School is a key place where kids both hear and read poetry. While many books for young children might seem like prose, they are usually short poems that form a longer story.
But aren't three year olds far too young to be taught about poetry? Why teach them something so sophisticated before they've mastered the art of basic language?
You're not going to believe this but poetry is also FUN! It has rhythm and rhyme which often contains humour, and has numerous benefits for building early literacy skills.
So what can we say about career education for three year olds? Is it too soon?
Well, as we saw with dinosaurs, if kids are excited enough about occupations, they'll be curious to learn more about them and will discover that there's more to the world of work than teachers, doctors and professional athletes. Research shows that children have already ruled out certain careers by the age of seven due to stereotypical biases (e.g. boys think they should be doctors not nurses, and vice versa), so we need to introduce tools and materials that broaden their horizons from a young age so as to prevent this narrowing of options.
By learning about the variety of different foods that are eaten around the world, children are encouraged to find out more about how other people live. The same is true of learning about diverse careers. Children learn about job roles from the people around them, which is why their ideas are so limited as they usually come from family members or from what they see on TV. They need to be exposed to a larger variety of job opportunities, and while it may be difficult in the real world to introduce children to ice observers, aircraft assemblers, furniture designers and medical animators, it's fairly straightforward to expose them to these careers through play.
And then we come to poetry. If, like with poetry, we make career learning exciting enough, children will find it interesting and will want to learn more. An engaging game or activity that involves the world of work is all that's needed to start curious minds wondering "what else is out there that I don't know about?"
As with any learning tool for kids, so long as it is age appropriate and fun then it's never too early to be introduced to a subject matter.
