What does education mean?

“Innovate at work? try doing that on a supermarket till or stacking shelves
A till operator could carry out the job robotically, or they could be cheerful, pass the time of day with customers, make the experience for them and for the customer a more pleasant one.”

Try that at Aldi, other supermarkets do encourage customer chat to a degree, it’s the customer behind that gets irritated. Shelf stacking widely derided has to be precise, it’s not a job for muppets, if the wrong product, price or expiry date is there it causes chaos.

If a supermarket employee had a good idea for a change in routine which would save time and effort and was genuinely useful, he/she mentioned it to the manager (who in a well -run store should know their staff and be accessible if one of the wants to talk to them) it could be approved and incorporated in the system.

If the employee had been well drilled in "Do as you are told and don't rock the boat by using your brain" and the manager was of David's "The right way is the way we already do things here. Keep doing it that way" the world would still be living on herbs collected in the woods, with the occasional treat of a wild animal caught in a trap of twisted vines or shot with an arrow from a bow.

its not a job for muppets.
David, you are excelling yourself on this thread ! What or who do you consider to be muppets - a shocking waste of to think of anyone

My local Aldi is staffed by many students who are supplementing their student loans. I have many interesting chats with them, and the full time staff too. You are very insulting towards manual and retail workers. But you know that, don't you? As I often told pupils when writing discursive essays, one example doesn't make an argument. You require more than personal experience and anecdotes. I would respect a differing point of view which used facts, statistics and a wider range of evidence than just "I said so, so it must be. "

Doodledog

Thank you, growstuff. That's very kind.

I fear we are all wasting our time though. Virtually nobody seems to have the same experience or opinion as David, which would give most people pause for thought, but he's not listening - just ignoring things he can't answer and repeating ideas about how 'the world of work' works on one employment model only.

I can’t answer individually the barrage of points that you think you are scoring points on.

Teenaged years are the most formative you will ever have the decisions you make affect your whole life, the friends you make, the relationships, the attention you pay to learning, the option subjects to study further. At that stage I believe that a student should concentrate on employability skills because earning wages are going to high on the agenda quickly.
In the final 2 yrs those that learn about and get basic skills in the jobs they are seeking are the ones that get the jobs. It’s important that you concentrate on whatever career you are choosing, recreational education can take a back seat for now.

Elegran

If a supermarket employee had a good idea for a change in routine which would save time and effort and was genuinely useful, he/she mentioned it to the manager (who in a well -run store should know their staff and be accessible if one of the wants to talk to them) it could be approved and incorporated in the system.

If the employee had been well drilled in "Do as you are told and don't rock the boat by using your brain" and the manager was of David's "The right way is the way we already do things here. Keep doing it that way" the world would still be living on herbs collected in the woods, with the occasional treat of a wild animal caught in a trap of twisted vines or shot with an arrow from a bow.

Try doing that, Even the store manager has very little control of the system, the position of every item on every shelf is dictated be HQ, he is just there to make sure as far as possible policy gets implemented.

Having once worked in a supermarket I can tell you that everything is dictated from the top, even the displays of anything.There’s no room for any innovation or blue sky thinking😄
Why isn’t it being acknowledged on here that many jobs are boring and repetitive and only done for the money? Of course they are.

Broadening the mind.

mabon1

Broadening the mind.

Yes, the more reading and self educating oneself the better.

At TTC our tutor said that teachers teach pupils how to learn, which can be used by pupils to learn many different subjects.
Lessons for life.

mabon1

Broadening the mind.

👍

Oreo

Having once worked in a supermarket I can tell you that everything is dictated from the top, even the displays of anything.There’s no room for any innovation or blue sky thinking😄
Why isn’t it being acknowledged on here that many jobs are boring and repetitive and only done for the money? Of course they are.

They are.

Trying to make the most out of shelf-stacking was difficult. I only did it for six months. However, the till operators at our local supermarket are always cheerful, even those who have to stand around ready to help customers with the self-service tills, even though the concept might mean redundancy.

I worked in a crisp factory.

People created games.

Biggest potato of the day.
Rudest shaped crisp
Most prolific packer
Rubber glove puppet
Pop the crisp bag (much frowned upon)

And stuff that wasn’t crisp related too.

Teabreak crossword
Sing along the line

People are endlessly creative when bored

It ia lazy people who invent the labour-saving devices and methods, too - the hardworking, "do it the time-honoured way" ones don't mind working harder and spending long on it.

To educate is to.lead out (from latin). You lead someone out of their ignorance of something so it's anything where you learn something.

Your response to Doodledog adds to the picture you paint of yourself as a rather arrogant individual who thinks in a limited way
To suggest Doodledog believes she’s scoring points made me smile ironically

Of course, not everyone in retail works for a supermarket chain. In the UK, SMEs (Small and Medium-sized Enterprises) account for approximately 60% of the total private sector employment. This means that over three in five people working in the UK private sector are employed by a business with fewer than 250 employees.

You would be more likely to have your boss listen to your ideas in an SME than in a chain which wants to maintain the smallest details of its corporate image. You have more chance of rising up the food chain to a position where your decisions matter, too. With more than half the workforce in small or medium entrprises, this raises another reason why a wide education from the start is important. Note - by "education" I mean here knowing how to assess the trustworthiness of information, be aware of repeating patterns, rank things in various order (priority action, relative value, and how to plan a course of action, carry it out, and assess its success or failure)

Given the large number of people employed in each big chain, it stands to reason that there are many more small enterprises with many more bosses than there are big chains with fewer bosses, so more people are likely to climb the ladder and have responsibility for the success of the business and the well-being of those who work in it. While much of the work-load of "the boss" is based on knowledge and experience of the kind of work carried on there, much of it also needs the basics of the skills in my previous paragraph, plus there will be endless paperwork to do.

Who is likely to be in the hot seat of these SMEs? People who started work there at the bottom and have risen from the ranks to be supervisors and undermanagers. If all they had learnt was that their task in life was to do as they are told, they would still be at the bottom.

In days gone by, people thought of women in the same limited way. Because they possessed the ability to do what no man could do - bear children - the prevailing philosophy was that this was the only thing they would be doing, so they needed only to be able to do things related to that.

What a waste of the talents and abilities of half the human race!

That to Iam

David49

Doodledog

Thank you, growstuff. That's very kind.

I fear we are all wasting our time though. Virtually nobody seems to have the same experience or opinion as David, which would give most people pause for thought, but he's not listening - just ignoring things he can't answer and repeating ideas about how 'the world of work' works on one employment model only.

I can’t answer individually the barrage of points that you think you are scoring points on.

Teenaged years are the most formative you will ever have the decisions you make affect your whole life, the friends you make, the relationships, the attention you pay to learning, the option subjects to study further. At that stage I believe that a student should concentrate on employability skills because earning wages are going to high on the agenda quickly.
In the final 2 yrs those that learn about and get basic skills in the jobs they are seeking are the ones that get the jobs. It’s important that you concentrate on whatever career you are choosing, recreational education can take a back seat for now.

Not in my experience!

Having two children in their late 20s/early 30s, I know plenty of young people who really didn't know what they wanted to do when they left school/college/university. They couldn't learn about the basic skills in the jobs they were seeking because they didn't know what jobs they were seeking.

Some of them found a job straight away, including one of my son's best friends who now has a six figure salary. Others took what jobs they could and worked out what they wanted to do. My daughter was one of those. She worked in a bar organising events such as stag nights before applying to the Civil Service's Fast Stream and being appointed. The bar work had nothing to do with what she does now. Another friend started off as an opera singer and now works with special needs children doing music therapy - she loves her job. Every single one of the young people my children know has a job.

David49

Doodledog

Thank you, growstuff. That's very kind.

I fear we are all wasting our time though. Virtually nobody seems to have the same experience or opinion as David, which would give most people pause for thought, but he's not listening - just ignoring things he can't answer and repeating ideas about how 'the world of work' works on one employment model only.

I can’t answer individually the barrage of points that you think you are scoring points on.

Teenaged years are the most formative you will ever have the decisions you make affect your whole life, the friends you make, the relationships, the attention you pay to learning, the option subjects to study further. At that stage I believe that a student should concentrate on employability skills because earning wages are going to high on the agenda quickly.
In the final 2 yrs those that learn about and get basic skills in the jobs they are seeking are the ones that get the jobs. It’s important that you concentrate on whatever career you are choosing, recreational education can take a back seat for now.

Teenaged years are the most formative you will ever have the decisions you make affect your whole life, the friends you make, the relationships, the attention you pay to learning, the option subjects to study further. At that stage I believe that a student should concentrate on employability skills because earning wages are going to high on the agenda quickly.

I'm not sure I agree.

Many pupils do mess around at school but find, when they are a little older, that they have found a vocation or at least a job they enjoy with prospects and will work towards that, gaining skills, experience and qualifications.

Adaptability, motivation and drive are all desirable too as not all teenagers know exactly what they want to do as a career. In fact, adaptability is an essential attribute as many may need to retrain, rethink career options in today's world.

X post growstuff but I think we are saying basically the same.

Oreo

Having once worked in a supermarket I can tell you that everything is dictated from the top, even the displays of anything.There’s no room for any innovation or blue sky thinking😄
Why isn’t it being acknowledged on here that many jobs are boring and repetitive and only done for the money? Of course they are.

Nobody is saying that there are no jobs that are boring and repetitive. We are saying that not all jobs are boring and repetitive, which is not the same thing at all, and that an education can equip people for the ones that are not.

This is similar to when on the other thread about Reform people were accused of being satisfied with (or defending) the education system when they were simply pointing out that generalisations are not evidence, that not all students/graduates are 'clueless' and 'the world of work' is not the same for everyone.

Yes there are those that start late, those that restart but get it right first time because it’s their best option. The majority of us are going to be robots on the treadmill, with AI it’s going to get worse let’s be smart robots, only the lucky ones get to be creative.

You’re a proper profit of doom David