Speaking to someone about what you in life and how you regard study I was drawn back to a conversation with a passionate young ecologist whose dream was to go to university and then get out and change the world. As time progressed and the 'A' Levels came onto the horizon the passion remained.
Off to university and they studied stuff in the first year that would enable them to live their dream and to become the difference. Then came a second year and there's talk of the 'milk train' coming to town and opportunities to be taken up by KPMG, Andersen's and other big and important management and financial organisations. By the beginning of the third year every conversation came to harbour in a bay marked £kkk and the potential for earning should they get a first or a 2:1.
Foolishly I asked what had happened to the earlier passion for ecology and green things and received my comeuppance! "The only reason to go to university is to maximise earning potential and expand the opportunities within the marketplace. The better the grades the more chance there is of being given an internship," (where you work your 'nads off only to find that the successful person is a relative of the CEO or some other incestuously related worthy - my addition).
Should we really be teaching our kids that education is all about 'earning potential' and maximizing things? I don't give a monkey's what our children do as long as they are happy doing it and derive some pleasure from making a difference in the world around them as they do it. But I do detest schoolteachers who spout tosh about education and earnings and academics who remain within their shiny white towers gazing up their behindsides whilst promoting education as a means for making money (which of course they do, but that's for another day children).
When I was helping long-term unemployed back into world (Note for 'back to' anywhere or anything people - you need to have been there to be going back - a thought for thoughtful evangelism?) I was telling people how the Institute for manpower Studies would point to five distinct careers between first and last job. We would be given reports that showed how we were going to go where sent, when we were sent, in order to bring home a wage - so the idea hit me; Why not do something you might enjoy?
It worked (Rick are you still a sport's reporter?) because people realised that when you have nothing before you then anything is worth having and if it is what you want, how much better can that be?
If we did education for money and maximising potential then who would rescue people from fires, preach to the lost, heal the sick, stand with the broken and change our ecological thinking?
If you have a dream or an ambition or a hope or a wish and you're unemployed, then what the hell have you got to lose? Go learn that subject, write that book, visit that place or be the person you want to be - after all, if you have little what is there to lose and how much more is there to gain?
If you have a dream, then pursue it - I'm sick and tired of deathbed revelations that the dyee always wanted to be something or other but their Mother wouldn't let them. We have but one life here (and then hebrews tells us we die and then we get judged) so why don't we stop living for the man and live with the Man (God) and find ourselves in Him and us in our realised dreams and ambitions.
God didn't make us to make money - He made us to touch each other, care for ALL of HIS creation and to be happy (within His laws, sorry - not a caveat to behave as you'd like outside of His will).
NIKE - JUST DO IT!
Pax
1 comment:
I'm in education, (a primary school librarian). All the learners want to know about careers nowadays is which job pays the most.
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