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Teaching And Learning

Colin Campbell
by Colin Campbell on 13/09/17 18:00

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It was around 1988 that I was ‘taught’ at school how to write my first CV.

I was told then that a CV had a specific structure, that it should be laid out exactly like this, that it should come with a covering letter that said exactly this (which amounted to just about exactly nothing).

I remember it well because it was a document I used to make my first proper CV for a job application in 1994 when I applied to be a House Officer at Glasgow Dental School. It’s possible I might have that CV somewhere at home.

Since writing that CV in 1994 I have come along way and I don’t have much call for updating my own CV anymore (although surprisingly I did submit one last year for the possibility of an amazing job that I never got selected for) but I have now become a person who reviews and short lists from CV’s.

I was interested when Grace, my eldest daughter aged 15 came back from school with that same project I had 1988 to write her own CV. Sadly and very sadly I knew exactly what was coming but lets pretend I didn’t, lets pretend it’s not like this.

We used it as a little game to play in the kitchen with Grace and Rosie about what a CV is for and it took a while to get there. A CV is to get you the job you’re after. That is what it is for.

At the very least it is to get you noticed against everyone else who has also presented a CV to the same ‘British Standard format’ that everyone else does.

Why do schools not understand that?

The school my kids go to get great results. They produce children to a format on a conveyer belt who can knock off the exams with practice and carry on onto a career pathway to non-creative oblivion. They revel in the fact that every year students from the school go to Oxford and Cambridge (this year exclusively for History) they trumpet the fact that children get into Dentistry, Medicine, Veterinary Science and Law.

Did anybody notice that the world is different now from 1988? The largest industries in the world that now exist, the ones that provide the largest amount of employment, didn’t exist in 1988. Even the concepts of those industries hardly existed.

To teach children to write a formal letter or worse still a formal structure to a CV that has to sit within ridged boundaries so that everyone looks the same, so that everybody gets the same and that everybody does what they’re told, will serve no body in the pursuit of a career that is fulfilling and worthwhile.

I am sad to say that in the CV exercise with Grace we decided to basically tour the line for the sake of a quiet life. So she wrote the CV her self and Alison and I looked and checked it. We made it a personal expression of what she loves and what inspires her together with a projection of her GCSE grades (amazing) to show how she volunteers to help disabled children to swim, the time and effort she puts in to improving herself as an equestrian rider, the wonderful things she has done with music. The CV was sent into school and pulled apart for being too personal.

Why the f**k would I want to employ a robot. I have got several of those in my practice and they are really good but I buy them from Dentsply. When I want to pick someone new for my team I want to know them and see their strengths, their weaknesses, what makes them tick, the light that shines in their eye when they talk to me.

Sadly the story of the CV is not just a reflection of that English teacher or the English department or even that school. It’s a terrible reflection of how we educate our children.

How on earth will we inspire our children to greatness when all we do is teach them to comply?

 

Blog post number: 1401

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Colin Campbell
Written by Colin Campbell
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