Get Yourself an Education that also Includes the Facts of Life!

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s a child you grow up hearing your parents preach about the importance of manners and education, the morals and ethics that will help you become successful in this life. Females hear about the attitudes that determine a good woman and we soak it all up, take it all in as if indeed our dreams depended on other people’s impressions of who we really are.

Then comes the wake-up call. You discover three-quarters of all that cherished stuff never amounted to a hill of beans; that it had very little to do with real life; that, for the most part, people are too busy looking out for themselves to care about you, except to gloat when you fall. There’s a name for that: schadenfreude. Cynical?

Education is without doubt life’s most important tool. But many will testify to the fact that education is not an automatic pass to the good life. Oh no. Sadly, many well-educated individuals, young women in particular (which is not to say boys are not also victimized), have learned a lesson not taught in class. And it is that far too often what you do with the big boss man (or boss lady) is more important than what you studied and what you qualified for.

I sometimes wonder why it seems the same group of people are always the ones landing the plum jobs. What about the rest who are as qualified but remain constantly unemployed? Are employers more interested in being serviced than in the service that could lift their companies’ profit levels?

In a job hunt, some experts say that connections are the most important influence in landing a job.

Without a personal referral to pass your résumé along to a manager or someone who can put in a good word for you, your chances of landing a job are supposedly non-existent. Let’s face it head on: it seems the only people getting jobs in Saint Lucia are the ones with the right connections.

Then there’s this thing called nepotism. The word derives from the Latin nepos, meaning “nephew”.  It would seem that unless you have the right relatives, professionally qualified or not, your chances of landing a good job here are limited. Should teachers begin warning their students of such real life impediments? Should kids be taught that education is fine but no guarantee to a better life than their parents had? With the world changing too fast for most eyes to keep up with, are we about to make education valueless? Then again, I’ve been assured that nepotism is as old as the hills and while education can take you a long way, the not-so-virtuous have always had a heads-up over job applicants who are ready to bend over backwards for what they deserve!