In Ireland secondary schools (high schools) have little or no interest in aiming people towards practical careers. Everything's aimed towards getting a degree in something so that you can get a nice cushy office-based job.
The majority of schools will push brighter kids to do academic subjects exclusively and tend to push them away from practical subjects and even from art!
Increasingly, kids are becoming more and more snobby about trades and wouldn't consider them at all. They will tend to do any degree, regardless of how uninterested they are in it, rather than to persue a practical career.
It's meant that we're now short of electricians, plumbers, fitters of various types, tilers, technicians, nurses etc etc etc..
Even the number of people who'll consider doing a pure science degree has dropped off as there is more money to be made in areas of IT and those who do do a degree in Science, IT or Business areas won't under any circumstances consider seconary teaching as a option meaning that high-quality graduates are no longer teaching our kids as they see teaching as an option for people who can't get anything else! Hence we've a shortage of teachers!
It's completely crazy! We'll end up with everyone working in financial services and developing software but with no nurses, no doctors, no teachers and no roads and loads of architects and engineers but no one to actually build buildings if we continue too far down this route.
[This message has been edited by djk (edited 11-23-2003).]
