En route to becoming a teacher, I found myself spending a day telling Year 9 and 10 kids about university. Groups from three different local schools came to the uni campus and we did lots of activities which were, quite frankly, bizarrely awful - “research a degree course and make a poster about it!” - and regimented by a guy who seemed to be suffering from clinical depression. I’m not trying to joke around here, I really worried about him, but how do you bring up something like that with a stranger?

My task in all this was to act as leader of a small group of kids, directing their efforts at becoming more aware of higher education. My role can be better explained by saying that if I hadn’t been there, all 5 of them would’ve sat in silence, twiddling their thumbs and maybe hitting each other.

Anyway, one kid (called, say… Vincent, for the sake of isomorphism) was a classic Opposer. Say something and his instinctive gut reaction is to oppose it, no matter what. When asked to take part in a presentation, he said “I’ll bet you money that you can’t make me go up there and say anything.” To adults, reverse psychology seems cheesy. We think we’d never fall for it. Maybe we’re right, but children are another matter. As soon as we had said “Fine, you can’t do anything”, he was getting involved.

(Can you remember the days when you still fell for the tricks that seem old hat to you now? What tricks do you think are still being played on you that only octogenarians have the experience to chuckle at?)

Vincent perked up when he heard about my route into university and where I lived. “Have you ever met a gangster?” he said. “Is there lots of crime?” he pursued, and finished with “Are there lots of scary spiders?”. His favourite game was GTA San Andreas. I noted that he obviously wasn’t 18, and he said “I don’t fucking care! Haha! As long as my Dad doesn’t care.”

(Speaking of games, I also impressed another kid by knowing who the lead developer of Halo was, and having spoken to him briefly on IRC years and years ago in the days of Marathon.)

Vincent was the most interesting one of the lot. We got on quite well, evil troll that he was. My fellow student ambassador mentioned that she did Economics. “What, you need, like, GCSE A’s and that?” he asked. We said it might help. “Fuckin’ hell!” he replied, not believing that we could be such fascists as to demand such performance.

At one point he leant forward and declared that “you can’t make me do anything. No-one can make me do anything.” I said he was right, but how did he plan to feed himself? “I’ve already had lunch, douh!” He later outlined his career plans with “I’m gonna get my Dad to pay for everything!”, although he also mentioned that he wanted to join the Army because they would teach him how to be a plumber. Not a bad plan, to be perfectly honest, if that’s what the Army is offering.

We were looking through the university prospectus, and the girl in our group hovered on Law. I asked if she’d found the entry requirements for the course (this was during the lame poster creation exercise), and she said yes, but she didn’t understand them. I had a look. It said “AAB”. I asked the group if any of them knew what AAB meant. None of them did.

Did I know about university entrance standards when I was in Year 10? I honestly don’t remember. It’s very interesting that things as seemingly simple as this could completely hold up someone’s career planning.

Also, when asked “What do you get out of a Law degree?” they said “money… and you get to punish people!”.

I was actually really impressed with everyone’s behaviour. Vinny obviously had a problem with authority, where authority is defined as anyone attempting to talk to him, but crude and egoistic though he was, he more or less played by the rules of defiance. The whole group treated me far better than I expected - I’m not enough of a teacher to have to disobey, and not enough of a pupil to have to disrespect.

In conclusion, the day was a bit half-hearted. All the kids had chosen to do it, which might make one think they wanted to be there. In fact, most just thought it would be a day off school, and they were right. There were some who were genuinely interested in higher education, but this day alone would’ve been totally inadequate to really get them started. I hope the schools followed up on it rather than using it as a way to put a tick in their box marked “widening participation”. I have no confidence whatsoever that that kind of behaviour amongst educational planners is rare.

The attitude of the pupils was one of total disinterest in their own interests. They didn’t seem to know what their own interests were. I think it’s quite wrong that we throw kids into school, expecting them to behave well and study hard, without providing any kind of clear incentive. Most adults find it hard enough to behave virtuously, so how can we expect kids just to pick up that skill on their own?

Forcing people to join the army creates unmotivated, resentful soldiers that are not just a hassle to train and use, but an active danger to those who choose to be career grunts. Why do we expect forcing people into schools to create such different results?