Report to the People
Prize Givings
When you start a new job, you are guaranteed some novel experiences. Even after 18 months as a full-time politician, however, I am still encountering unexpected challenges.
In the past couple of weeks, for example, I attended for the first time a number of school prize-givings - one at Notre Dame and another at St Columba’s.
I’m sure that more seasoned politicians take such events in their stride. But, bearing in mind that the last time I stood in front of an assembly I was being reprimanded for misbehaviour, made it a fairly daunting experience.
It wasn’t just the fact that young people are no doubt sick of having to sit and listen as adults talk to them. Or that they were in school on a night when they probably had 100 things they would rather be doing. (Compounded, in Notre Dame’s case, by the ceremony falling on the same night as the Celtic v Helsinki game.)
No. What concerned me was, as I said to the students at Notre Dame, the expectation that I would dispense some words of wisdom for future reference.
Giving such advice is, I think, almost impossible. What is right for one student could prove disastrous for his best friend or sister. And it is, of course, made more difficult when you consider the pace of change in the workplace today’s students are preparing to enter.
I thought about the last time I was sitting in a school assembly hall. I had no idea of the technological advances which were about to unfold. I was about to leave school and enter a shipyard, which I regarded as a job for life. The idea that the yards would ever close and that in 35 years we would be making components for something called a computer was inconceivable.
But, as we know, the journey from ships to microchips has not been easy. Our community suffered terribly from having thousands of workers with skills which were suddenly redundant.
So, if I tried to get one thing across to the students it was this: none of us can tell how the new world of work will develop. If they are to take advantage of the next employment revolution, rather than fall victim to it, they must not to repeat the mistakes of my generation. They must make sure they have the right and the ability to learn new skills and widen their opportunities.
In short, they must not stop learning the last time they walk through the school gates.
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