Chronicle Editor
Fredrick Qaphelani Mabikwa
In my last article, I looked at career guidance where I stressed the point that career guidance must begin at home.
My last article focused mainly on academic careers. I however want to make it abundantly clear that careers are not all about academia, they are also to do with passion and talent manifesting themselves in fields like entrepreneurship, sport, music, dancing, arts, craft, videography and other related trades.
A former student of mine came literally crying to me saying that her daughter who was in an expensive private school had fallen in love with music and all her school efforts were now on music. She was devastated and disappointed in her daughter.
She was saying how could she settle for music as a career, where in the world had she seen music taken as a career. I immediately told the mother that music was indeed a career.
When our children go to school, not all of them will excel academically because they are cut out for different careers in their lives. When examinations come at the end of the term, all of us parents are anxious for our children to pass the examinations and bring home a very good report card.
We erroneously think that a good report card, a certificate, a diploma, a degree is a guarantee for a good future for our child. Do we, at any given point as parents understand and appreciate that among our children, there is an artist who doesn’t need to understand Maths, there is an entrepreneur who doesn’t need History and Geography and there is a musician who doesn’t have to excel in Science?
We have sportspersons in our children, with talent in football, rugby, basketball, swimming, tennis, athletics and all. What is critical for these child sportspersons is their physical fitness more than their academic grades.
Some children are cut out for leadership, even in politics and some are farmers and these talents start to manifest themselves when the children are still in school.
They do not need high school distinctions and degrees to lead politically or to be successful farmers.
Some are cut out for church ministry and will become priests and pastors and they do not need Maths and Physics for this ministry.
Sometimes we see our children exert themselves in their school work, we really see them working hard but come end of term, the report card is not pleasing. Children are gifted differently.
If your child gets top marks on their report card at the end of the term, that’s great but if the report card is not pleasing, don’t take away their dignity, self-confidence and self-esteem by coming down heavily on them.
Encourage them, tell them a bad report card is not the end of the world, it is only an examination and assure them they are cut out for much bigger things in their life. Despite the bad report card, you love them and you are still there for them and you assure them that one day they will indeed conquer the world.
A failed examination does not translate to a failed future. Some people think that those academic professionals, lawyers, doctors, engineers and the like are the happiest people in the world. Not at all, they too have their share of problems. The world has seen a lot of very successful non-degreed people.
Examinations are important but they are not everything, good grades are critical but they do not define our children. Children who are not gifted academically are gifted elsewhere, there is no useless child.
They have so much potential in these other areas that they are gifted in. Albert Einstein once said, “Everyone is a genius, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it’s stupid.” He further said, “Education is not the learning of facts, but training of the mind to think”.
Some academics live average to poor lives because they can not think beyond their certificates. Certificates can enslave if not well managed.
Those skills that are much needed for one to be successful in life aren’t found in passing examinations. Certificates, diplomas and degrees just confirm that the student understood what they were taught, they don’t confirm what the student is really capable of doing.
Most of our students are socialised to think that they must complete their education and get a good job. Talents and passions are left to die while someone is either on a job or hunting for a job.
Complete fulfilment comes from allowing our children to discover their talents and passions and work harder on these than they would on their jobs. We leave our jobs at the end of a contract or retirement but our talents and passions, we take to our graves.
There has to be a balance therefore between the pursuit of passions and talents and the search for jobs. One Saturday afternoon, I met my former high school student doing the filming of a wedding.
He was in a nice uniform with three crew members. I had known him to be working for a local university and when I asked, he said he was still with the local university but videography was his passion.
He whispered to me that he made more money at filming than his job and was seriously considering leaving his job to concentrate on his passion, filming. He gave me two business cards, one for his formal employment at the local university and the other one for his passion.
May I confirm that he was driving an up-market vehicle. Formal employment can enslave and some people never get to pursue their passions and talents.
The world is fast changing and most of us parents do not realise that most school curriculums are becoming obsolete in the changing world. Some of these careers we are pushing our children into are slowly becoming irrelevant as manual skills are being replaced by technology.
Technology has seen the bank and related industry move from the building into a smartphone leaving just a few staff members in the banking hall to complement the technology.
A friend of mine who works in a cement manufacturing company was telling me that they bought a giant machine called a Hooding Machine-Bocedi that is connected to the palletiser.
The mill makes the cement, the palletiser puts it in stacks and the giant machine packs, seals and loads cement bags onto a conveyor belt for final dispatch.
This drastically reduced staff from shop floor staff up to management.
So, it’s very critical to check how relevant our children’s careers are to the changing world. It is estimated that by 2030, globally, we will lose over five million jobs to automation.
This means that in the not-so-distant future, jobs will look vastly different by the time many people graduate from university.
I was reading a very interesting article by Arthur Marara on the issue of passions and talents. He says “certificates and degrees don’t reveal people to themselves, they at most measure IQ (Intelligent Quotient). He says there is no “Recovery” without “Discovery”, a poor man is simply someone that has not discovered themselves. We carry inside ourselves latent treasures that can only be unveiled through self-discovery.
The purpose of education is to keep our minds perpetually opened towards limitless possibilities. Degrees and certificates position you to look for jobs not opportunities. Being poor is simply Passing Over Opportunities Repeatedly. Beautiful insights.
In conclusion, allow me to say, we need to teach our children to appreciate the reality that faces us now that future jobs will involve knowledge production and innovation.
Speaking during a conference organised by the Zimpapers Knowledge Centre dubbed, “Tourism and Hospitality Industry meets Tertiary”, held in Bulawayo last year, Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Development Minister Professor Amon Murwira who was represented by his then-deputy Ray Machingura said Government replaced Education 3.0 which only focused on teaching, research and community engagement to heritage-based Education 5.0 whose thrust is to produce goods and services through innovation and industrialisation.
We need to help our children think outside the box and not limit themselves to the classroom and jobs. Real financial security and independence lie not in the classroom and in jobs but in their passions, gifts and talents and their innate ability to discover opportunities and seize them.
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