I think the use of the term qualification should not only denote a particular educational achievement. I think it should be called so only when a person has demonstrated the ability to undertake a particular task. This will help in two ways. Firstly to ensure that people who are naturally clever at school do not get unfair advantage over people who are committed to the job. Secondly it will help to recognize the many people who are running their own businesses, undertaking difficulty jobs without any so called qualification. Our government has for years claimed to have a programme for Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL). But how many jobs advertised in the papers do you see with a prerequisite called RPL? Very few. Even government when it talks of minimum qualifications in its job adverts refers to an educational certificate. And a lot of people with commitment and ability are passed over just because while others had money and went to university, they went to look for work and ended up gaining the ability to run mining operations underground or do other jobs for which they are not qualified. Only for a person with a degree and no form of work experience to one day come and tell them what to do. Because society recognizes the college as being more able to train than the work environment itself. So when a person is not able to gain the achievement educationally that others are able to, society quickly demotes that person to an under achiever. And prophesies doom over their lives. This is why we have teachers and doctors declaring kids who cannot grasp certain concepts as abnormal and disabled. A case in point is that of a kid who was declared autistic and taken out of school because the teachers said he would not amount to anything. Only for him to then go home and study the entire high school maths curriculum in two weeks! Yes tow weeks! Because society rejects anything that is outside of its established norms of qualification. No one should upset the system by being unconventional. But if we took our education system into the factories and other work environments of the country we would find a lot of under qualified men and women who are doing tasks that no college degree can prepare you to do. So today I take my hat off to the many men and women whom although rejected by society have been able to achieve things unimaginable. The factory operators who came up with new designs without mechanical engineering degrees, the healthcare workers who came up with alternative medication interventions, my sister who started directing ships in a harbor with a std 7, my colleague who showed engineers how to run a production line with a std 5, the old granny who is running a successful chicken farm. Some may not have had the privilege or ability to walk the corridors of higher learning but this has not reflected their lack of intellectual ability. Instead they make this country work. You may look down on them but what you study in those thick textbooks, they get to live it out everyday of their lives.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 07:13:45 +0000
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