My friends and me - on different paths than our parents

Emmy wrote that people increasingly need to be better qualified to find jobs in Kenya. The situation in Kenya is different from that in Germany, of course. But here we young people also need more and more qualifications to get a good job – and many of us actually have these credentials. I talked with my girlfriends about how our educational training and our lives as a whole have changed compared with our parents’. We have been friends for years. Some of us even went to the same kindergarten, so we were educated in the German school system at the same time.
Five of us finished Gymnasium with an Abitur, a diploma that allowed us to study at a university afterwards. And two of my friends first finished at a Realschule and then did their Abitur at a Gymnasium specializing in economics (here I wrote more about the German school system). Afterwards, they finished vocational training. One of them now studies on the weekends alongside her job.

The majority of our parents, in contrast, didn’t study at university. Four of us are the first ones in their families to go on to college. But this is not the rule in Germany. If you take 100 children whose parents didn’t go to college, 24 will go on to university themselves. But when you look at 100 children of academics, statistics show that 71 of them will attend university.

But our academic degrees aren’t the only difference between our education and that of our parents. Six of us have studied abroad or worked while travelling in another country (Pavel wrote more here about gap years). No wonder that all of us speak English decently. That is a contrast to our parents: Most of them know only a little English. But, after all, they didn’t need it for being successful in their jobs anyway. Often our fathers earned enough money to support their families. Thus, our mothers didn’t have to work full time and could care for us children.

While we learn, live abroad, and make plans for our free time, our parents had very different worries at our age − particularly the ones who didn’t study. My father had already bought a house when he was my age. My mother had just had her second child; her first one − me − was already four years old. None of us seven friends bear that much responsibility. All of us are unmarried, and no one of has a child or a house.

Our generation has been taught to be flexible and mobile

After all, why should we plan on building a house? We, the young work force, are supposed to be flexible and willing to move. One of my friends, for instance, was told at the beginning of her training for becoming a teacher that, after finishing their training, the future teachers wouldn’t be able to choose where they work. The state would appoint them to schools they would be needed at. Whether they had a house in another city wouldn’t play a role. Of course, things aren’t very different when it comes to the private sector, but at least you can choose your employer more freely.

I don’t want to say that this is negative. We are enjoying these freedoms that have also been made possible by our parents. It is great to speak English fluently and to have lived in different places worldwide. At the same time, it’s amazing how much our way of planning our future has changed from that of our parents, how many more unknown variables we must deal with. While our parents thought already in their mid-20s that they would become old in the town they had been born in, some of us don’t even know what the five next years will bring.

Ultimately, I don’t think it’s just more qualifications that the job market demands – but also more flexibility.

Taking a bit of time before starting college isn't a bad idea

Kathrin’s recent entry mentioned Simon, whose worries as a pupil made me think about something relating to education beyond universities. A favorite topic among those getting ready to graduate: the gap year.

As I understand, it’s quite popular in Western countries. A spare year is open to you; it allows you to broaden your horizons while learning something new or doing some part-time work – or simply travel. One of its aims is to give you some extra time to plan your future. It’s natural that your interests may lie in different spheres by the end of school – so I think it’s good to take some time to think them over and decide where you want your path to lead. But for some reason, this positive phenomenon is practically unknown in lots of countries, including Russia. Why?
One reason is that the number of universities and colleges has increased significantly over the last two decades – getting higher education has been made into a fetish. If you don’t have a diploma or don’t enter a university immediately after school – you are seen as a loser. What about those who have some peculiarities of mental development or have shown no interest in further education? Jobs that require physical skills could be a good solution for them, but the system of colleges and vocational schools has degraded since the early 1990s, when “the new Russia” appeared on the political map. And it is really difficult to rebuild this system – but it is vital if we don’t want to over-saturate the market with university diplomas that are hiding the fact that graduates have few professional skills. That can happen especially in regions where universities created courses within their programs but never found qualified professors to be responsible for teaching them.

I'd like to see gap years become more popular in Russia

Another reason people don’t go for gap years in Russia may be that all males over 18 must spend a year in the army. There are some ways to defer conscription, and studying in a university means getting it. As most boys finish school at 17, they have to enter university right after it, otherwise they will be recruited. But why don’t people want to spend a year in the army? Well, unfortunately, people in Russia think there’s too much violence against younger conscripts and too much corruption. That’s why parents prefer their sons to go on to college. I wonder why don’t consider reforming the army. After all, that’s what civil society is supposed to do when it is not satisfied with a situation.

The third reason that stops people is money. Travelling during a gap year is not what many families can afford (and teenagers usually haven’t saved much money themselves by the end of school), so parents invest in the traditional model of education. Self-education used not to be popular, but as Bob Dylan sang, “The times they are a-changin’…”.

I do hope the practice of a gap year will spread among the people in my country. It means experience, learning how to manage your independence – it’s another brick in building your personality.