The Society, The School, and I.

_{Hazem Omar}

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Decades ago, when people wanted to get into a higher institution, the majority of them selected their choices based on what their parents approved. And most of the time, their parent's approval was either driven by society or what they themselves had studied.

For the latter, you will see a parent that is a lawyer insisting his child also take the legal path and become a lawyer. Anything else will not even be considered. And for the former, they will accept only courses that will guarantee well-paying jobs once the schooling was over. That is why courses like engineering, medicine, accounting, and law are usually the most sought after. There was a time that having such degrees would guarantee you a job the moment you stepped out of school.

And back then, getting to study courses was not as difficult as it is now. There were fewer students that were interested, and the criteria were not all that high. As long as you met them all, you would no doubt get the admission.

_Pixabay

But all that was then… decades ago.

The story is not much different now though.

You would think that things have changed a bit and people are now free to choose what they want to study in school. While our parents may have relaxed a bit and society is no longer adamant about what courses are the best to study, the economic situation of the country, the bleak future, and the schools themselves will still impose on you what to study.

You might love music, but you dare not go to the university to study music. The same for football. The only talent that society has accepted that can be studied is acting. Every other one, you just have to groom yourself or you go to an academy.

People select courses based on how employable they will make them. They want courses that will place them in offices and give them white collared jobs, they want the kind that will ensure that the money keeps on coming and never runs out. And courses like law, engineering, medicine, and accounting promise that.

Try as you may, these are all courses that once you have them, you do not even need to be employed before you can practice them. You can choose to open up your own firm and operate from there.

But alas, if only things were that easy. These courses are the most sought-after courses in the universities. The school will only have slots for five hundred students, but ten thousand will apply. So only the best of the best gets taken, and there are those that will get in because of their connection or their money.

The competition is tough, so obviously many of them would not get in. Then the school would begin to scatter off the students, sending them into different departments closest to the ones they had applied for like from Medicine to Science Laboratory Technology. It might get so bad that they would send some to a course that has absolutely nothing to do with the one they had applied for, like from Mass Communications to Library Science. Totally different!

_{Craig Adderly}

And still, many people have to accept the course. And I will tell you why.

As it turns out, the rules of society have also changed. Society is no longer picky about the degree you must have, all it wants is that you do have it. These days, all companies train their employees properly before they resume duties, it doesn’t matter what their qualifications are. This is why you can study Fishery in school and you will end up working in the bank.

So, with this mindset, a lot of students are not picky about the courses they offer in school. They just want to be students, graduate, and get a certificate. Although there are those who are adamant about what they want and keep trying until they get it, there are also those who try it once and get taken to study their preferred choice. But it is not like that for everybody.

As you can see, many of us are not studying courses we love or genuinely want to, we just have to make do and conform because it is a means to an end. And that is another reason we get involved with businesses while in school so that once we were done we would not have to rely solely on the degree for our upkeep.

This is a trend that is fast becoming a culture, and I do not know where it will all lead. People need to be able to study whatever they wanted and then still be able to make use of the degree after school. It is just sad that there are few opportunities here, so we have to limit our learning to those that are available seeing as many of us would not be able to school abroad.

I do hope things get better because if not coming generations will definitely have it worse. I look forward to a future where people study only what they want, and they do this without fear because they know that there is a system that will take them in after school. Once assurances like that are certain, many people will feel free to explore their passion.

But until then… I will keep hoping and dreaming.

_{Julia M Cameron}

Thank you for reading, till we meet in the next post.

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_{Borderimage credit: @deimage.}