{"text":[[{"start":6,"text":"“Please do not cut off a fountain of inspiration for the next generation of UK scientists and engineers,” wrote 200 celebrities in an open letter to new Prime Minister Andy Burnham last week. They urged him to save the Jodrell Bank radio telescope, where many children had experienced what they called a “spark moment” that ignited their interest in science."}],[{"start":26.76,"text":"I sipped from that fountain. Jodrell Bank’s huge steerable dish stands incongruously on the Cheshire Plain a few miles from where I grew up. When I was about 11, I had a birthday party there."}],[{"start":38.98,"text":"The spark did not catch. I faintly remember coming away with a pocket full of indecipherable ticker tape from one of the visitor centre’s machines and shivering outside watching the dish slowly alter position on its circular rails. That was it. You may have noticed that I am neither an astronaut nor an astrophysicist."}],[{"start":57.08,"text":"Even had my visit kindled that dream, I would have been hard-pressed to realise it, given the tiny number of vacancies in those fields. As parents, we like to hear our children voice their cute career wishes, but at a certain point it becomes clear to them that they won’t lead a mission to Mars and might have to settle for more earthbound job opportunities."}],[{"start":76.2,"text":"A social media meme satirises these compromises with users’ childhood photos, overlaid with messages such as “ever since I was a little boy [or girl], I knew I wanted to log into Microsoft Authenticator 27 times a day, create deliverables for key stakeholders, and boil the ocean”."}],[{"start":93.52,"text":"Now it feels as though even those humdrum dreams are in jeopardy, as artificial intelligence and geoeconomic uncertainty narrow the paths for young job hunters still further. Data released last week showed UK graduate vacancies were at their lowest since 2020."}],[{"start":108.64,"text":"Britain sits on a trove of information about children’s career expectations. The National Child Development Study is following some 17,000 baby boomers born in 1958, the year after Jodrell Bank’s telescope was completed."}],[{"start":122.12,"text":"Aged 11, just under 14,000 of this group wrote short essays imagining their life at 25. The most popular career they envisaged was “skilled manual” worker, chosen by almost one in seven of the group, then “professional”, “teacher” and “typist/clerical”."}],[{"start":139.76,"text":"It is a stretch to call these dreams (though 6.4 per cent foresaw becoming sportsmen or women). The essays reflected social status and parental expectations. A few coupled what sounds like a dream with a more achievable reality: “I’m going to be a footballer and an electrician.”"}],[{"start":158.28,"text":"Nobody seems to have worked out how many lived up to their childish forecasts. But the exercise makes me wonder what today’s primary school children would write."}],[{"start":167.44,"text":"AI optimists suggest the technology will spawn many as yet unnamed jobs, offsetting disappearing roles. Younger generations could “face a serious gap between their hopes for work and the reality of what is available”, economist Daniel Susskind writes in his forthcoming book What Should My Children Do?"}],[{"start":184.84,"text":"Rather than second-guessing future roles, it would be better to aim for and develop traits that will be necessary in any future job, such as a capacity for learning. Yet it is hard to imagine many kids writing that they want to be “a resilient, emotionally intelligent critical thinker” when they grow up, even if the education system were equipped to help them realise their dream."}],[{"start":207,"text":"That open letter contains a grain of hope. Its signatories include broadcaster Brian Cox and Queen guitarist Sir Brian May, both of whom have lived their dual dream of being rock stars and scientists. What struck me, though, was how many were not scientists, and had not studied science. They included authors, musicians, comedians and other creatives for whom AI could now open up possibilities their 11-year-old selves never imagined."}],[{"start":233.24,"text":"We should be encouraging our children to aim for the stars, but Susskind suggests they may need to reframe their target: study law because you want to seek fairness and justice, or medicine because you want to help people live longer — not to “be a Supreme Court justice” or “be a brain surgeon”."}],[{"start":249.56,"text":"“Move into a field because the underlying problems grip you, not the traditional job,” he writes."}],[{"start":252.92,"text":"One study of the NCDS findings suggests job aspirations at 16 were a “motor” that drove them to seek further education and helped them achieve higher-status jobs in their mid-thirties. That suggests that, in an unpredictable world, it is less important that the spark moment lights a path to a specific destination than that it prompts us to dream in the first place."}],[{"start":280.64,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1786273858_7162.mp3"}