I stretched out and scrunched down and put my head back and drifted, eyes shut at once. Our Heavenly Father is aware of all of us and have a specific plan for each individual. Often times, the opportunity to further our schooling is an answer to our prayers. But what of vocational choice? What if the child wants to become something other than what the parents might choose? Does the environment still support one’s choice? A young man discussed with his psychology teacher the following problem. He is the son of a school teacher father and school counselor mother. Because both parents have masters’ degrees and are intimately involved with education as a life’s work, they have unthinkingly assumed that their children would follow in the same path, at least to the extent of college. The student is a bright young man, getting B’s in most of his subjects, with occasional A’s. However, his best work does not come from the social science courses or the courses he might need to move on to the state college. His interest lies in cars. It began in junior high school when he bought himself a small motor scooter. He learned to take the scooter apart and do all the repair work. In high school he and his father teamed up to build a dune buggy out of the mother’s old Volkswagen Jetta sedan. He has is own BMW now, paid for it with money he earned from fixing cars for other people. #RandolphHarris 1 of 12

He feels strongly that we would like to drop of our junior college, go into the army, and take training in mechanics. He knows he could satisfy both his pleasures and his own interests and his parents’ desires for him to be a college student if he would remain in junior college and take a number of courses in the school’s fine auto mechanics program. The young man feels that this would be a compromise, since he really does not enjoy the other coursework nor is he particularly interested. The psychologist noticed the student’s embarrassment at saying he was not interested in psychology, and this promoted the teacher to push a bit further. He felt that the student was under a great burden of guilt because he did not share his parents’ enthusiasm for education. That turned out to be the real problem because parents influence children’s career choices both intentionally and inadvertently. By the time children move into adolescence, they begin seriously considering their futures, often looking to their parents either as role models or for career advice. A parent’s approach to this can either inspire teenagers to explore a diverse set of potential occupations or to stick to a path they think their parents would approve of. #RandolphHarris 2 of 12

In a few sessions, the student came to see that the psychology teacher was accepting him regardless of what he had said about the man’s field activity. The student gained some confidence and began to formulate plans to sit down with both parents. Generally, many people are the third or fourth generation of their families to work in the same profession. They have an insider’s glimpse into their parents’ occupations, making it easier for them to break in to the industry. If their parents’ jobs give them great satisfaction or provide a comfortable lifestyle, children see the perks early on, and may favor these careers over others. In contrast, if parents complain about their jobs or struggle to support the family on the income their jobs provide, children are more likely to seek more fulfilling or higher-paid roles. The student told his parents that he loved both of them as parents and as people, but that he had interests other than theirs. He appreciated all they had done for him, all the acknowledgement they had made of his interests and capabilities, but he wanted them to know that he was considering going into the army to learn mechanics. #RandolpHarris 3 of 12

The parents were shocked, not hurt. They had had no idea that their son could feel any other way but theirs about college. They both realized that they had not paid too much attention to what he wanted and had merely assumed that their interest would be his. The mother admitted she would have some trouble, because of personal pride, in accepting the fact that her son would not graduate from college, but having admitting it she realized that it was not as important as his doing what he honestly felt was a better expression of who he was. The father admitted that he had hoped the son would also go into teaching, but knew that the boy’s interest in mechanics was more than just a hobby. Studies have shown that happy people tend to earn higher salaries, and it stands to reason that these high-earners are happy, at least in part, because they have jobs they love. It is important to have passion for your career choice because it is more than just a source of income. If one does not enjoy what one does for a living, that individual will end up missing out on one’s life. A job is much more about personal fulfillment and growth. People want to change lives, including their own. One’s career should make one feel good emotional, both in and out of the office. A job that one loves gives the individual extra motivation to meet one’s goals, and a greater sense of accomplishment. #RandolphHarris 4 of 12

Cultural emphasis on higher education for everybody does not always take into account that some people cannot express their selfhood best in academic pursuits. Many people are mechanically or artistically or commercially or socially oriented. Although colleges are offering training in all these areas, some people will actually gain more from field experience, and will carry and radiate that success wherever they go, helping oneself in other aspects of one’s life. Another example of a supportive environment comes from the case of a young woman who had a different situation: The girl’s father was dead and she was helping to support her younger brothers and sisters. The mother worked very hard to operate a small gift and stationery store, with the girl helping her after classes, on Friday evenings and all day Saturdays. She enjoyed the work, had a warm and open relationship with her mother, and yet was troubled. She had a boyfriend whom she had dated for over two years. They were in love and wanted to get married. However, since he had received his draft notice, to marry him would mean to move and live near the base. #RandolphHarris 5 of 12

The mother needed the girl’s help in the ship and with the children in the home, but she also knew that her daughter was a person in her own right and needed to live her own life. The mother developed a deeper fear that her future son-in-law might get killed and that her daughter would be as hurt as she had been by her own husband’s death. She became away that her fears were keeping her from letting the girl go, and when she discovered this and worked it through with the help of her pastor, she was able to tell the girl to go ahead and do what she felt she must. Life for humans involves intellectual and emotional character, volitional choices moral and aesthetic values. God gives parents to children to help build the qualities into them that will prepare them for a most useful and satisfying life. We are to be imitators of God, our Heavenly Father, as beloved children. God has a goal in mind for his children, to conform them to the image of Christ. As parents, it is important to keep the objective in front of one, which is to see one’s children grow up to love God with all their hearts, and to love others as they live daily by submitting their thoughts, words, and deeds to the Lord Jesus Christ. God declares that a person’s ways later in life will be determined by one’s early experiences and training. #RandolphHarris 6 of 12

Most situations are idealistic. Not all parents are able to see that they often try to meet their own frustrated needs through their children. However, increasingly parents are learning how t be persons in their own right and to release the persons in their children. They may hope that their children will follow in their steps, will make them proud of them, will provide them with grandchildren and other long-term goals, but if the parents are whole persons who want their children to also be self-actualized, they will have no desire to live through their children nor want their children to live through them. Secondhand or vicarious experiences are never fully satisfying. Raising a child successfully sounds like a superhuman task. As a matter of fact, it is. It demands more than human resources have to offer. It required supernatural wisdom and strength. “And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Jesus Christ,” reports Philippians 4.19. And God knows exactly what we need to be a good parent and person because he is himself the Model Parent. “And if your hardhearted, sinful people know how to give good gifts to you children, will not your Father in Heaven even more certainly give good gifts to those who ask him for them?” reports Matthew 7.11. #RandolphHarris 7 of 12

In school the student typically finds oneself pitted against another challenge. Since the school system, even into college, is heavily geared toward grade attainment, many students find themselves having to work for marks and transcripts. Often they would like to take subjects in which they have a real interest; but because they do not have the time to take courses outside their majors or they have to worry about their grade point average, they cheat themselves of the chance to explore and widen their range of skills. Educational institutions are only partly at fault. In stating the requirements for success and advancement, society cautions the student not to play around in one’s schooling to get one’s diploma, certificate, or degree and get out into the working World. This attitude produces narrow specialists. Contemporary people are faced by encapsulation. The dilemma of contemporary specialism, that is, specialism in living as well as a specialism in work. I mean the narrowing down of vocational tasks brought on by the industrial revolution and resulting in 20 different experts making a shoe rather than one master shoemaker. We have become so impressed with specialized skills, deep but narrow knowledge in one isolated area, that we have forgotten the pleasures that some with discovering things in fields other than our own. #RandolphHarris 8 of 12

Why do we look at the manifold achievements and involvements of Leonardo da Vinci with the same wonder and awe? Here was a man who could (some would say should) have stayed within one field and perfected himself in that area. Instead, Leonardo da Vinci perfected himself as a painter, writer, scientist, inventor, and many things totally out of keeping with narrow specialism. The problem then is one of letting education do its job. If we could permit teachers to do their best work, or works, in helping a student draw out all one’s hidden potentials, we would be going further in the direction of promoting and assisting self-actualization. To do so would require a wholesale change in society’s attitudes if only because it would require funding and program-development. However, it amazes me that people seem to no longer be wanting to help students, but desire to strip them of their talents in their young and leave them broken so they can prosper off their efforts. So many hearts had waxed cold when people see bright youth, in need of guidance, and are in positions to help them, but totally ignore this calling. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12

To help our youth reach self-actualization would require a wholesale change in society’s attitudes if only because it would require funding and program-development. The student should be able to feel one’s value first of all as a person, then as one interested in knowledge and learning for its own sake, and then hopefully as a person who has proficiency in one or two important areas and general knowledge in many others. For centuries, the hallmark of a university education has also been the nurturing of every student’s capacity to develop, assess, and communicate their understanding of the World in which they live. General education ensure that people achieve both breadth and depth in the skills and justifications of knowledge that are more relevant to the World in which they live. We work and live in a changing, and often unpredictable World. Having knowledge of general educations provides and individual the opportunity to enhance one’s ability to think critically, develop one’s communication and mathematical skills, stimulate their capacities for creative, innovative thinking, and enrich their knowledge of the wider social, cultural, and natural Worlds in which we live and will have to live and work. That is important because when one is out at dinner with executives from a network, one will be able to do more than just sit, look and listen, or repeat sound bites heard on television. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12

A well-educated individual should be able to have some input about all things from spots, science, politics, religion, current events, and so on. However, many people find grades to be restrictive because it prevents a person for going outside of their range of study, since time is so limited. Therefore, the grading problem will be a difficult one to solve. Again it would be necessary to institute a change in the attitudes of a society which thinks that competing for grades prepares the student for the competition one will face in getting a mate, getting a job, advancing in the job, and many other facets of living. Certainly we must prepare the student for the competitive ethos in the World off campus, but that knowledge could be balanced by the recognition that selfhood, personal value, is not totally dependent on good grades. Schooling is not only preparation for living; it is part of living. In school the student is exposed to the whole range of problems and pleasures of life. More than being a laboratory for life, it is a laboratory of living. In the microcosm of the campus people who exemplify the employer, the employee, the husband or wife, the competitor, the helper, the protagonist, the colleague seems to have an anchor in their soul. God is this needed island of stability, which helps us handle stress. #RandolphHarris 11 of 12

Education is only part of life, but a very important part. Performance during this period is dependent on an individual’s self-concept, one’s picture of personhood, and the values one holds concerning oneself and life in general. Education should also strive to be of benefit to the individual and to society apart from the requirements of employment. It should, in particular, contribute to a student’s capacity to be an informed, responsible, and responsive citizen. This will allow an individual to develop awareness of the intellectual, moral, aesthetic, and social context of one’s life. And when you have given your life you all and cannot see how you are going to reach your goals, keep trying and count on God. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the Heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows,” reports James 1.17. When everything is changing around us, it is important to remember that God is a consistent Father. He will never let us down. He can be counted on. He is reliable. God is worthy of trust. “Behold, this is a choice land and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall be free from bondage and from captivity, and from all other nations under Heaven, if they will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ, who hath been manifested by the things we have written,” reports Ether 2.12. #RandolphHarris 12 of 12