People like to talk up new technology in education, but there is a catch...

On Wednesday, the third plenary session of the DW Global Media Forum focused on education as the milestone for sustainable development. Denis Goldberg, a social activist from Cape Town, South Africa, argued, “The focus of education should shift to sustainability because we depend on it.” Doing so requires taking action on issues including overpopulation. One of his suggestions for limiting population growth was expanding social safety nets. By doing so, people move away from the idea that having children is the only way to ensure a stable future.

I thought to myself that he was right. However, the entire debate seems to be missing something. The other speakers at the plenary each discussed how to get young people – teenagers and children – more interested in education, in terms of everything from reading habits to new media and new technologies applied to education. That is all well and good, but from my point of view, we must not forget the basics of personal development. In a poverty-stricken region, if a child does not go to school and is not getting an education anywhere else, it is probably because he is also not well fed.

Aside from the basics, we need to consider what kinds of opportunities we are providing people. Professor Barbara Ischinger (Director, OECD Directorate for Education), presented three stages in maximizing the use of skills educators try to impart: in the short term, putting skills to use; in the mid-term, training in different skills; and in the long term, developing relevant skills according to each country’s economy. Her presentation was very relevant to the NGO where I work. We are developing a new online platform aimed at vocational education. The objective is to provide information on different career paths with a focus on science and the energy industry. One of the discussions we have is whether or not to include training programs for specific skills, since we want teenagers to feel encouraged to take the university path.

Traditional educational outlets, like libraries, got less attention at the conference

The truth is, though, young people these days often need to start working at an earlier age in light of their lacking economic stability (if they have any at all). Another presenter spoke about permeability –the idea that a person could start in a vocational training program and then later be given the chance to continue their studies in a university. Employing people, giving them skills, is the foundation of economic security, and these prospects must be in place for higher education to work.

We have a tendency to overlook some elementary problems when thinking about educational strategies. One of the conference speakers, Verashni Pillay (Online Deputy Editor, Mail & Guardian, South Africa) nailed the main problem in clear words: “Let us get the basics down before we bring in another futuristic view of education.”

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.

Parting ways and thinking about what will come after the summer..

Summer is here, so pupils in Russia are saying goodbye to their high schools. For many of them, the period of college or university life is about to begin.

Sometimes I think about my former classmates and wonder whether they have successfully found their niche. I’m glad to know that one of my friends earned two university degrees in our native city and moved to a bigger one to take on a third course of study. Or another friend of mine, who is climbing up in the media sphere, calling people’s attention to different events in Russia and abroad. I remember also that a couple of boys decided not to enter a university but chose a vocational training program (VTA) – I wonder how they are doing now.
We were quite different at school, but since we all had to follow the same program, the differences weren’t so easy to notice. We were different in terms of our grades and (seldom) our behavior in school, but these things reflected only some surface peculiarities of our characters. However, peculiarities like these can have a bigger impact than one might expect.

Where to work - in an office, a factory or somewhere else entirely?

People who end up choosing a VTA or a college usually do so because they either find these courses easier to pass, and that’s enough for them, or they simply realize that their grades in school won’t meet university requirements to get a scholarship, and they can’t afford paying for 4-5 years in university. That can create serious challenges for their future. As I mentioned in my previous entry, the system of vocational schools has degraded since the early 1990s and has to be rebuilt, but it will take years to accomplish that. The choice for those who follow this path is difficult: If they want to achieve something in life, they must build up good skills, become a respected specialist and then either start their own small firm in their field or work as a freelancer.

But many guys go on to a VTA simply because they’re not motivated to try and reach more important goals. Therefore, they end up joining the number of low-qualified workers or ‘cogs in some office routine machines’ with practically no promising future. The salary is not enough to afford extra courses to obtain new skills. That’s why many males do not live to reach their retirement age (60 years old). They die earlier. I think the whole situation could be improved by offering them some psychological help, but, again, it will take time before programs for offering that are available.

In spite of the higher education fetish, a qualified ‘blue-collar worker’ can earn more than a ‘white collar’ worker – but many are misled by the stereotype that holds the opposite. The quicker the VTA crisis is overcome, the better for our economy as a whole – and the better it is for the job market and education.

Kenya's job market is taking some twists and turns

Last time, I wrote about how the competition in the job market in Kenya is getting stiffer by the day. More and more people now have master’s degrees, for example. The question is: Where does that leave those who cannot afford to climb the education ladder that high?

There are other options. One can go to a tertiary college. I have several cousins and other relatives who did not have the finances to go on to university once they finished high school, even though they had worked hard enough to get grades that would have been sufficient for entering a university.
So the next best place for them was a polytechnic or a college, which usually require two years of study to earn a certificate or a diploma. I recognize that other countries may have a different meaning for diploma. For us, the PhD is regarded as the highest educational level, then the master’s degree, then the bachelor’s, then a diploma and, at the bottom, is a certificate.

Those with just a diploma cannot compete for the same jobs as people with a master’s. Needless to say, most of my cousins did not stand much of a chance at a white-collar job. Most of them resorted to starting a business or farming, which is also a viable option. The girls mostly got married off.

But for those who want to attend university, there are other options for financing education such as government loans and bursaries from the state – including from local governments. I received a government loan, which I am still repaying. The funds offered are usually sufficient to pay for fees in a state university with just enough left over as pocket money.

What happens in this system is that the space for creativity and for nurturing talent in areas like art and music is almost non-existent – a problem different from the one Hellgurd discussed in Iraq.  That is because studying these fields is not regarded as education! Parents generally frown on their children if they say that they would like to be musicians or artists when they grow up.

There are a few people who have had an education in music, art, drama or similar areas, but people tend to consider that as involving talent and entertainment – not education.

Personally, I think it’s important to find a balance between what one is good at, where one’s strengths lie and what puts food on the table.

In my opinion, stereotypes related to the labor market should be eliminated

One of my friends has recently been offered a position as a professor in a foreign university. While discussing the offer with him, I thought about our job market and would like to share some ideas about it.

I’ll start with the step just after graduating from university. There are people who work in spheres that have nothing to do with their university degree, and that is mostly due to low wages in the professional spheres they would occupy. Teaching is a common example – only a few students with a diploma go in for teaching at state schools. Most prefer to find some other job even if their skills won’t be required there at all or to work in a university. However, the number of private language schools is increasing, and local authorities are considering possible grant programs, so the situation is slightly better than a decade ago.

But it still seems slightly irrational: why spend 4-5 years in a university and then do something totally different than what you studied? Such behavior can surely be found in other countries, but in Russia, its scale is a serious problem. Unfortunately, the problem is also underestimated.

Our society views a man without a job as a loser, and surely it’s difficult to build any future while facing unemployment. The promising thing is, though, that the market is developing and there are opportunities that were totally unknown a decade ago. Freelancing is one example, and this sphere is controlled rather feebly by labor legislation. Our parents’ generation finds it difficult to understand this way of working – as a result, many freelance workers are treated as if they do not have a regular job and are losers. In my opinion, that is a dangerous stereotype, and it should be eliminated.

Another stereotype involves salary. It’s been thought that a man ought to earn more than a woman since many think that all the latter has to do is look after children. Well, nowadays the job market is more flexible and absorbing Western trends. However, it does not always mean that you can earn as much as you want. The increased flexibility allows you (or even encourages you) to earn more because the inflation rate is rising more quickly than salaries are, so you have to find some part-time job. As a result, there are cases where a woman earns more than her husband.

I think families themselves should decide who the breadwinner is. The key thing for me is that the one who earns less shouldn’t be dependent on his or her partner’s salary.