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Listen to thisOn considering college
In the 1950’s in Ireland, the educational system was such that if one
passed a State exam one could then choose the college programme one
wanted. My father recounts an interesting experience he had. He was
leaving home to travel to University in a town called Galway and was
travelling in a bus. Outside, it was raining and he was considering
which programme he might undertake. His choice lay between accountancy
and medicine. He suddenly heard a thumping noise and the bus came to an
abrupt stop. The driver had, apparently, knocked down a cyclist. All the
passengers got out to survey the damage and my father pushed to the
front of the group, saw blood coming from a head wound running into a
drain and nearly passed out. He decided there and then that he would do
accountancy. It was as arbitrary as that! Some 40 years later he has
stayed in accountancy, but who is to say that he would not have made an
excellent doctor “assuming, of course, he managed to get over his fear
of blood–
On coming to college
In about three weeks the first year social care/Child and Youth Care
students of 2001/2002 will arrive at the various colleges around the
country to commence their formal studies. It will be new terrain with
many lessons to learn (and, no doubt, several to forget) experiences to
have and people to encounter. They will quickly learn which lecturers to
avoid, which notes will get them through examinations and assessments,
which restaurants offer the best deals to students, which campus banks
allow for the most credit and which bars stay open the latest. And up in
the staff rooms we will be debating that old question once again “is it
better to have high points for entry onto our programmes or should we be
looking for key personality traits? Have we got the best students, the
most appropriate students?
Before students arrive at college
In the college where I worked for the past nine years we insisted on
what we called a “pre-entry year”. This involved the students obtaining
a field placement after being issued with the necessary points in their
final school State exam in August each year. These points stand at
around 300 each year. The vast majority of students are aged
approximately 17/18 – but we also allowed for a mature student intake of
roughly 30% who did not need the required formal points in State exams.
The student contacted the college in August and started the laborious process of tracking down a willing field placement, a field supervisor and somewhere to live. None of this is particularly easy when you have just finished school and the majority of your friends are (a) wondering why on earth you chose Child and Youth Care and (b) are going directly into paid work or college programme such as law or nursing.
I have always had great sympathy for these students, but felt, all things considered, that the “pre-entry year” was a good idea. Surprisingly few students drop out of the field placement and they are called back to the college three times during the year for instruction from the lecturing faculty. Nonetheless, for many students, this is an anxiety filled year. They ask questions such as, Am I too young to work in this area? Will people like me? Will I be competent? What are the college’s expectations of me? What are the practice placement’s expectations? Such questions are routinely asked by older students who have significantly more life experiences. The year grounds the students and allows them to see first-hand what Child and Youth Care may be all about. It also means that the students are more mature when they take up formal studies.
The college perspective
Formal points alone should not determine whether or not a student be
accorded a place on a Child and Youth Care programme. It is surely
important that a student be afforded every opportunity to shine, to
excel to prove that she can make the grade when in a programme. I
believe that Child and Youth Care should continue to strive for full and
independent professional status, but I also feel that there are many
ways to achieve this. I would much prefer to have a Child and Youth Care
practitioner who had excellent manner, robust knowledge and treated me
with dignity whilst in her care than one who could blab off the theory
of attachment to me “important as it is. One of the key issues we
educators will have to increasingly deal with as the market becomes more
liberal, employers become more demanding and “clients” become more
problematised is how can we attract suitable people to our courses and
then keep them there for as long as it takes to achieve the highest
qualifications possible? Answers on a postcard please ...
