* Occupation - Scholar etc

[lastejas]

Since being in lockdown I've decided its a good time to cleanup of my Family History research both in Family Historian and TNG and to be honest I cannot now see the point in recording children with the "Occupation" of "Scholar" as an event, but will still record it in the "Text from Source". Just to be clear I'm meaning when it is recorded in a Census Return

Grateful for opinions from my more learned colleagues as to what you do.

Cheers and keep safe.

[ColeValleyGirl]

I put it in Text from Source but not an Occupation attribute. It is after all a transient childhood state and not what somebody did in later life.

It probably wasn't something they did in earlier life, unless they were an unusually diligent student. You might as well record: Went to school every day and tried not to get into trouble.

[jbtapscott]

I use Ancestral Sources to capture data and find it particularly good for Census data. I have "Relationship to Head of Household", Marital Status" and "Occupation" configured such that they are concatenated within a local Note on the Census fact for each individual rather than generating any specific Fact records (I also use the Auto text feature so that all details from the Census are recorded on the Source record). This way Census occupations such as "Scholar" (and its variations) do not get created as, to me, "silly" Occupation facts.

I took this route as I was finding that I often ended up with multiple Occupation facts for a given individual (often reaching double figures when Census and, for example, children's Baptisms, marriages, etc. sources kick in!). It just looked silly on my website with (say), ten facts saying a persons Occupation was "Baker"!.

[tatewise]

AS recognises this scenario and in Tools > Options > Census settings has the Record scholar as occupation option that can be cleared to avoid creating an Occupation attribute for that case.
So you can record most Occupations as a fact but just exclude that special case of Scholar.

[ColeValleyGirl]

There's some merit in having multiple occupation facts for an ancestor, even if they're repetitive (0nce they're past the 'Scholar' stage.

I have somebody who started out as a Painter and Glazier at the Royal Arsenal in 1851 aged 21; 8 years later he was a Journeyman Grainer; 2 years after that he was a Painter on the Tramp; and 3 months after that he was a Painter and Glazier at the Royal Arsenal. 10 years after that he was a Photographer; 10 years, 12 years, 20 years later he was a House Decorator again. A year after than he was a Photographer and a few months later a Decorator. 5 years after he was a Photographer until her died 8 years after that.

I find it useful to see the economic tides that affect my ancestors; or, if they were a miller all their life, to see evidence of that.

[lastejas]

Thanks for your thoughts and ways of working.

I'll be deleting all those "Scholar" occupations and setting AS to ignore when creating Occupation facts.

[David2416]

I prefer to keep both Scholar and other occupations as recorded on each source. They act as anchors to record school admissions or promotions and pay rises (railway ancestors or career soldiers). Also changes of occupations as economic situations dictate. It also alerts me if a particular source shows a different occupation. One ancester who was a grocer on one occasion is recorded as a bookbinder - why?

[davidf]

In general (for E&W Censuses) how accurate is "Scholar"?
Did enumerators use it as a default for all school age children?
Did parents volunteer it even if they weren't going to school (authorities might want to know why - and you could not exactly state "chimney sweep for a 7 year old!)

[David2416]

I don't dispute that enumerators and respondents may not report exactly what is true on the ground! It's worth checking through an enumerators records to see how he tends to work. I prefer to record what's there and then note what I think might have actually been the case citing my reasoning in notes.

[davidf]

I certainly tend to do that with "other occupations" where there may be nuances between various statements.
I have always struggled with "Scholar"; I think I have once seen a note along the lines "too sickly to go to school", but otherwise it has been blank or "Scholar". I will take the details through to the recorded transcript whatever; but I am so uncertain about the meaningfulness of the distinction between blank and "Scholar" that I don't take that detail through to an occupation fact.

[AdrianBruce]

Just to throw this in - I have a custom event for "Education" and use that to record Scholars, precisely to keep them out of Occupation data. But then again, I don't use Ancestral Sources so I've no idea how feasible it is to take that approach with AS.

NB - if anyone is au fait with the GEDCOM standard fact types and wondering why I have invented a custom event for Education, when it's already there... That's because it's not quite there already. What's there is an attribute, which isn't quite the same thing. I did wonder how an attribute could record someone being at school and so invented the education event and slightly repurposed the education attribute (or maybe I didn't repurpose it at all).
- Education event - the event of being educated at that time;
- Education attribute - relabelled as Education Level - the final level to which someone was educated - particularly useful for some American censuses;

[BillH]

Adrian,

Not to quibble, but I believe the US census is showing the highest level achieved at the point in time the census was enumerated, not the "final" level achieved by that person.

Bill

[AdrianBruce]

Bill - yes - gosh I hate it when I'm out-pedanted by someone!

In my head I was thinking of adults who'd left school decades ago, so were unlikely to be going back into education... Still even so, yes, as always, it's the info at that point in time.

[David2416]

In my head I was thinking of adults who'd left school decades ago, so were unlikely to be going back into education... Still even so, yes, as always, it's the info at that point in time.

In my role as an Interviewer working for Office for National Statistics I regularly come across people who have gone back to full time education as a mature student, some of whom are of advanced years! Having worked on the 2011 census I also have some sympathy for the historical enumerators

[Gowermick]

HaHa,
I think you must be referring to me. I got a BSc(hons) degree in my 50’s, following my retirement from BT. At the time, providing you had suffcient qualifications to apply, degrees courses were free, and it beat having pay to study Computing. Don’t think I’d bother now, much too expensive

[jsphillips]

Surely dependent on the census year , Scholar (if interpreted correctly) shows whether they are at school instead of school age.
Not all children were lucky to go to School.

[davidf]

It's the big "if"!

(Sir) George Edwards, b 5 Oct 1850 to Thomas and Mary (he an ex soldier) never went to school (his first occupation aged 6 was a crow scarer) and in the 1850s they spent some time in the workhouse, but the 1861 Census has him listed as "Scholar" (at the time he was working - probably depending on season - as an agricultural labourer and a brickmaker)! His wife taught him to read and write.

[Gowermick]

Surely dependent on the census year , Scholar (if interpreted correctly) shows whether they are at school instead of school age.
Not all children were lucky to go to School.

Indeed. I’ve seen many a 7 year old working in cotton mills or coal mines!

Personally, I always record the ‘Scholars’, as that is what census says is their occupation. Pointless applying our own interpretation to what is written, it is what it is. It is down to people reading our research to apply the interpretation, not us!