Clement Clementson, Contributor
OUR CHOICE of cake ingredients is sometimes misguided. We allow a non-mathematical mason to build houses but prevent people from becoming nurses because they can't pass mathematics. Which of these folks need more mathematics? Counting to some, consumer arithmetic for others, trigonometry and calculus for those who need and have the aptitude for them. Save time and money and avoid some frustration.
Cake is light-dessert stuff, party stuff. Dumplings, chicken back and lemonade, though cheaper and not so highly thought of, are a more balanced meal for productive workers. We can have a more productive workforce with a less formal, less sophisticated educated system if we are brave enough to do what needs to be done. Thomas Edison spent about three months in school but he gave this world more than one thousand inventions electric light, sound recording, motion pictures.
Light cake has more status than its cousin 'bulla', especially when bearing some fancy recipe name or brand name. Too much of our 'education' is about which school, which course, what certificate, what degree rather than what kind of person is being produced and what he or she can do integrity and ability are what we need.
MISEDUCATION ABOUT EDUCATION
It is generally agreed that education is good but there is much miseducation about education: some employees seem to believe that the mere presence of an educated person will help their business, even when the knowledge they bring is ignored. Some educated people think they know it all and have no ear for the experience of others. Others think that education is the way to big salaries without working, and that it is OK to underpay and overwork the less educated. Real education increases efficiency and justice at the workplace and elsewhere.
Somewhere I have read or heard it said that when she heard that the people had no bread the French queen jokingly said, "Let them eat cake instead". Some time later in the revolution they had her head instead.
Because there is a shortage of jobs to 'earn a bread' many people are going back to or staying longer in school to get some more education 'cake' with the hope of getting 'qualified' and improve their chances of getting jobs. But quite often, after the sacrifice of energy and time and dollars, employers tell them that only persons with 'work experience' are needed. How can they have such experience when they never worked? And some who do get jobs suddenly find themselves chewing something tougher than the nice play-and-study cake of schooling. Some of the unhappiness, frustration, crime are the result of an unnatural separation between 'education' and 'daily bread'.
Many of the above-mentioned problems and others can be tackled by a serious attempt to bridge the gap between 'cake world' and 'real world'. Work-study programme, earn-learn scheme, apprenticeship (whatever name we choose to use) can reduce education cost and produce better workers. Let the students have 'hands on' experience in the workplaces at an earlier age. And if certain people cry out about child labour remind them that some of the present great economies grew with the help of nine-year-old chimney sweeps and 12-year-old railway workers, like Thomas Edison, the inventor.
Clement Clementson of Harewood, St. Catherine, is a former high school teacher.
