Several not-that-thought through things on this interesting idea. I agree that an above-average 14 year old could demonstrate a lot of hard skills as well or better than a below average adult worker. If you need a spreadsheet populated, some averages taken and a graph made then their are a surprising number of working adults who could not even start. In any typical school class there will be many students who can finish. My suspicion is the things called “soft skills” might be a lot weaker in 14 year olds though. (“My mum forgot to pack my lunch. What should I do?” they ask their line manager.)
-Many parents will be wary of their 14 year old children travelling to an unfamiliar place on their own. (So will either drive them to the work place, make sure really hard they have memorised the right bus/train changes, or forbid them from going at all).
- In social ways 14 year olds are importantly different from adults. They will over-estimate the knowledge and understanding of the “adults” even more than the adults will under-estimate the understanding of the teenagers. They will (I suspect) be very keen on everyone-agreeing-about-everything and being happy, and so will be loathe to bring up anything they know that suggests that actually something might be wrong.
Several not-that-thought through things on this interesting idea. I agree that an above-average 14 year old could demonstrate a lot of hard skills as well or better than a below average adult worker. If you need a spreadsheet populated, some averages taken and a graph made then their are a surprising number of working adults who could not even start. In any typical school class there will be many students who can finish. My suspicion is the things called “soft skills” might be a lot weaker in 14 year olds though. (“My mum forgot to pack my lunch. What should I do?” they ask their line manager.)
-Many parents will be wary of their 14 year old children travelling to an unfamiliar place on their own. (So will either drive them to the work place, make sure really hard they have memorised the right bus/train changes, or forbid them from going at all).
- In social ways 14 year olds are importantly different from adults. They will over-estimate the knowledge and understanding of the “adults” even more than the adults will under-estimate the understanding of the teenagers. They will (I suspect) be very keen on everyone-agreeing-about-everything and being happy, and so will be loathe to bring up anything they know that suggests that actually something might be wrong.