These are timeless questions. And I heard them again the other day. Not from a young student, directly. But from one old enough to be his great grandmother.
Patti: "What should he do? What line of engineering should he choose? He is a good boy and has finished school. He will surely get good marks. But he is confused, Which line should he choose? Shall I send him to you? WIll you please speak to him?"
Teacher: "Yes, what shall we say that is something tinged with more than just hope and 'trust me I know'?"
P: "He wants to do well."
T: "I understand that and who would not. But what does 'doing well' that mean to him?"
P: "A god job and a good salary. If the IT boom had not ended he would have gone that way. But now he is unsure."
T: "Yes, what would he like to do? What would he be happy doing?"
P: "Well, that is his confusion. He does not seem to have much that he is sure of."
T: "If I see read the aspirations of most educated young people who I meet, a good job seems to mean sitting in an air conditioned office before a computer, and enough money."
P: "While that seems stark you may have a point. The man who comes to fix my air conditioner is not an engineer, but a tenth passed worker."
T: "Students who do engineering want to go up quickly - up the ladder, into management, or marketing or finance or IT."
P: "Therefore does it matter what branch of engineering, particularly if one is not going to pursue engineering?
T: "Patti, you are not supposed to be saying this - that is my line! In the college atmosphere, with peers bringing new information, this is where students gather aspirations."
P: "It used to be simple some years ago - people could choose an engineering or medical course and then life took care of them"
T: "Unfortunately, or fortunately the rules have changed in the 21C. Recently someone said to me that your degree will take you only 2 years in your career."
P: "At least that!"
T: "But what if you are only clear about 'sitting in an air conditioned office before a computer, and enough money'? The 2 years will not take you far. After that people seem to need an attitude of learning and willingness to learn again. They need stamina and forbearance to try many solutions and work with different sensibilities."
P: "Schools and colleges don't seem to be helping our young people learn this. Years ago in Germany students used to go to industry. And they were not only looking for white collar jobs.
T: But today in India even people who have passed 12th standard want an office job. No one wants to travel or get their hands dirty, if they can avoid it."
P: "We have to accept this as the popular aspiration. We cannot wish it away."
T: "Yes, therefore the question becomes even more poignant - what do we say to a young person, who asks for advice. What do we say that we feel is authentic and good and has his or her long term interest in mind?"
P: "It is safe to suggest engineering, or MBA or Visual communications."
T: "I would feel very inauthentic saying this to any young person. I may say....
it is ok for you to be confused and not know what to do. It is also perfectly ok to want to earn well and be happy. I wish you this.
However it is important to ask where you wish to start, particularly when you are unsure what interests you. You must remember that you live in times very different from those we have grown up in. This means every 3 or 5 years you will be learning new things and will be required to learn new things. This will be needed whatever your job or work. So you need to cultivate a discipline of learning. Unlike in the school or college, what you have to learn may not come to you in the form of books. You will have to search for it and go after it. You need to smell out possibilities and take them forward.
Most people seem to go for a college degree because they feel 'incomplete' without it. All will agree that most things they learnt in college and school are not used by them. They would simultaneously tell you that the experience was valuable for all the things outside the classroom.
Now may I raise a few questions, as much to you as to myself? Is there another way of approaching this question? Let us take some facts:
- Considering that college education does not matter much for what you have to do, if you must, just take any course. It will give you feel a sense of belonging. Further, you don't have any compulsion that you must work in an area that you study.
- Three and four year course have a new significance these days. They say knowledge doubles every 2 1/2 years. This means the ground that you cover in college will be 1/2 as relevant by the time you pass out.
- You have to continue learning even after college and this is unavoidable.
- You will do most of your learning on the job, in the contexts of your choice.
Now considering that your degree will take you 2 years into your career, and that you would need a discipline of learning continuously, what would be sensible for you to do?
- Are you sure you wish to be in an air-conditioned room all your working life?
- Which level do you wish to enter the work life? As an apprentice or as a manager?
- Is apprenticeship for a year or two, work experience for a year or two followed by a degree an option at all?
- Your resources now:
- your language abilities
- your close contact with the breadth of school education
- you have dreams
- you have energy and are willing to many things and learn many things
- and you have friends
- You need to make a choice - will I invest in life long learning? or will I give greater value to 3/4 year college degree learning?
Now, I would suggest to a young person to try and do 2 or 3 short term assignments in a year or work as an apprentice to someone who is doing in an area that he / she likes. One thing this exercise will do - one will find out what is definitely 'no'. I would also advice a young person to enter the world of work 'modestly'. If one is learning, one does not expect to be paid a high salary for it. Colege charge one for the opportunity to learn. So crafting a learning opportunity for oneself with a modest income is like having a stipend for learning, studying, discovering what one enjoys doing and would like to be doing.
One may also discover that the skills one has are already more than what is needed in most jobs! With this confidence if a young person continues to learn then soon he or she can do a degree or earn a qualification. Many of us know people whose organizations are sponsoring them for higher qualifications. Short term courses in the work period are quite common and practical.
As David Orr wrote in 1985 "...the oldest and most comfortable assumption of all that education can take place only in "educational" institutions. Colleges and universities are expensive, slow moving, often unimaginative, and weighted down by the burdens of self-congratulation and tradition. They offer a discipline-centric curriculum that corresponds modestly with reality. The grip colleges and universities now have on "education" will be broken when young people discover alternatives that are far cheaper, faster and better adapted to economic realities. "
He further goes on to say, "Students ought to be encouraged first to find their calling: that particular thing for which they have a deep passion and which they would like to do above all else. A calling is about the person one wants to make oneself. A career is a coldly calculated plan to achieve security and have a bit of "fun" that turns out, more often than not, to be deeply unsatisfying, whatever the pay."
Without this discovery the young person is at risk of merely looking at the income and lose on vitality and vibrancy. i would ask the young person keep a record, a diary, answering a few simple reflective questions, thus taking charge of his / her life:
- What have I learn today?
- How do I say i have learnt this?
- Have i collaborated with my colleagues today?
- How do I say this?
- What listening did I bring to colleagues today?
- What is the basis on which `i say that i listened?
- What initiatives have I taken today, things that no one asked me for?
I would say that, "If in a week running you havent learnt much or listened well, or collaborated or taken initiative, then you need to reorient your attitude. Nothing will improve if that does not change." I would also say, "And if you find good evidence of these same qualities, then nothing can stop you - certainly not the want of a degree."
Ancient Indians spoke about Swadhyaya - being one's own teacher, being a student who is learning irrespective of the circumstances. In reflecting honestly on one's life, free of assumptions and expectations one may discover the ability to educate oneself. In this discovery, one would also find alertness, freedom, humility, joy. And the ingrained belief, that one needs college education, to take oneself ahead, will find its place.
If school is a valuable social institution, it will lose in value if there is an overmuch of emphasis on marks in the exams. The student, grounded in reality, respectful relationship and lifelong learning is not born out of performing for the teacher's approval. In fact those that do too well in school seem to run out of steam early in their work life and also lose verve. One may hazard the guess that parents and teachers should worry about preserving the spirits of students rather than constantly tell them what they need to do and what they should not. Nothing injures the spirit more. And lastly, parents need to hold their anxiety - they need to survey the landscape around them. They need to look at their own classmates, people who went different paths. They need to take courage from the fact that most are reasonably well off. And those that have collapsed have not done so because of the want of a degree. Some of the collapses have been because society could not validate and support an artisitic temparament, a physical intelligence or a musical one.
And for those who do extremely well academically, may be their real education is being unwittingly neglected.
12 May 2009
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