It's a biological imperative that, within a species, variation exists. Variation, consequently, means that some people are better suited to certain things in life than others due to natural variation from person to person in aspects such as charisma, intellect, strength, obedience and a plethora of various other personality traits that make up a person. To survive in our organised human society it's become a necessary part of life to get a job and work in order to support the lives we lead but, annoyingly, despite there being all of this variation between people- people that originally make these jobs available- the requirements for jobs tend to, on the whole, don't seem to have much variation to them.
From a young age we're now told to have a very clear idea of what we want to do with our lives, so clear that we must know what qualifications (thus courses, places to study said courses as well as other training it might require) we need in order to get to that job in our lives. I can clearly recall in Year 9 at high school being asked to choose what GCSE subjects we wanted to do in Year 10 and having this immense pressure to choose subjects suited to our ideal careers because they mattered so much and were the first step towards them. For 13-14 year old kids (barely teenagers) this is a truly unfair weight to place upon them but, unfortunately, this weight doesn't let up in high school. Further pressure is placed on students through the next two years of their education to consider carefully their next steps into higher education; what type of course; what course specifically; how to apply; when to apply, all the while still placing on a pressure that seems to scream 'If you mess this up, you will live a terrible life'.
The reality of it, though, is that most kids- a fair amount of adults, for that matter- have no idea what kind of career they want to pursue in life, let alone what courses they'd need to go through in order to get there. So these people- a few people I know fall into this category- go on to do either whatever courses they feel like doing or ones that they feel will give them the best prospects for a job once they've completed them. These people, I find smart, because they're working to give themselves the best chances they can despite not knowing anything specific about what they want to do.
The job driven world that we're living in now and the youth of today seems to be, for the most part, like trying to put two completely different jigsaw pieces together and- today- it dawned on me that in today's world there are seemingly so many opportunities but just as many closed doors. Someone I know has been at college and they've worked hard for a year and a half, gritting their teeth and bearing with it as best as they can despite disliking it. Instead of throwing in the towel and just getting a job, they decided to apply to a different course in September only to find out that because he dropped out of college as late as he did that they're reluctant to accept him. This person can be very committed when they want to be and they're also quite intelligent, why is it then that for perservering with a college they don't like and still wanting to do well for themselves by applying for another course their reward is a turned down offer? To me it's not fair and it doesn't make sense. Will this person continue to, yet again, apply for more courses to improve their future applications? I certainly hope so but, honestly, I could very easily see why they'd be opposed to doing that.
It seems that whatever you want to do you need to be the best at everything and have insanely high qualifications to match unrealistic standards. Even then, if you do have the qualifications, comes the annoying and petty thing that is past experience. Given the current economic climate, there are few jobs that won't accept you on without experience but, if you're fresh from education, you don't have any...so where are you going to get experience from if nowhere's hiring you because you don't have experience?
It's as if the world's standards are set at a certain point, a fixed point, and with so much variation in people, variation in how well they perform, what they want to do, if they even know what they want to do, I think it's insanely unfair to set uniform requirements for people. In the effort to gain good, hard working employees and continually raise the standard of work, the working world is alienating the next generation from being able to support themselves at all and, obviously, this will not end well.
I only hope that, in time, things start to become easier on the job-front in life because, if it didn't, then the person that I mentioned above may end up losing their fighting spirit towards making way in the working world. To me, if even one person loses the will to work because of unfair standards, then that's a travesty that should be on every governmental official's mind when they make radical changes to the education system that pressures people into considering their lives in 10, 20 or even 40 years when they've barely lived even a quarter of it by average life expectations.
No comments:
Post a Comment