Apart from education being the perfect excuse for most people to be unlearnt, it’s also a perfect way for them to look smart. You can’t fail to look smart when the first thing you say after meeting someone/anyone is where and what you studied.
How can you not look awesome when you’re able to summarise your awesomeness in degree this or degree that? Well you’ve earned it. All that energy, time and funds put into your education must surely amount to something. You’ve earned the right to flaunt it to whoever chooses to listen.
There’s one tiny problem though, you’re a fool! Unless you’re drafting a CV, nobody gives a damn if your papers fill up a room. We’ve all seen so many degree holders walk all over town or camp on office benches in search of jobs to no avail.
We’ve also seen uneducated individuals walk into a boardroom and come out minutes later with a signed deal. It’s not rocket science figuring out. Books are no longer a yard stick with which to measure intelligence and competence. Character is. Most educated people are just fools with a paper stuck in their back pocket to constantly remind them that they are. Somehow I’m willing to bet my arm and leg that it’s one of the biggest causes of joblessness.
Onetime I was sitting in a bar, sipping on some poison. It was not busy so my friend the waitress came and sat with me for a chat. She had no education to speak of but every time we talked, it was a time well spent.
That day, we talked at length. She said the bad thing about their line of work is that everyone thinks their illiterate, which is true anyway but, the worst thing is people thinking that everyone who’s not educated is stupid. Now if an illiterate person can tell the difference between education and intelligence, how is it that an educated one can’t?
After your graduation party, you go home full of all the energy and hope of the world. You’re going to get a nice clean job and soar through the corporate ladder. You’re a graduate and people give jobs to graduates. They respect them. Your tomorrow is certain.
A few years down the road you still haven’t got a nice clean job but you still carry your papers as if they’re a monitor upon, which your existence is hooked. You don’t care whether you’re working for a company whose owner is illiterate but you somehow believe you’re better off because you have a bunch of papers stashed somewhere gathering dust.
You eat kikomando for lunch and supper yet you feel the guy who sells it to you should look at you as a god because well, he wouldn’t be selling kikomando if he had gone to school like you, would he?
Let’s say you get your nice clean job and soar through the corporate ladder. What has that got to do with anyone else except for you and your family? What you have is a water-marked paper that confirms you have gone to school. It’s not wisdom, it’s not character and it’s most definitely not a life. A sign of good living is when people respect who you’re without necessarily knowing what you are.
inamarah@matookerepublic.com