 |
| Photo by Oscar Omondi on Unsplash |
A young person can spend years preparing for examinations and still feel unprepared when the examinations end. They can graduate with good grades yet struggle to write an application email to a potential employer. They can understand all the theories and still feel lost when faced with a problem that has no clear answer. They can even acquire diverse certificates and yet wonder what they are actually prepared to do with them.
This is not an argument against formal education.
Education matters.
Yes, it does.
I, myself, have learnt how to read and write. It has helped me, and I cannot deny that fact. I believe it has helped many people become literate enough to express themselves and participate in society.
But the truth is, if education and graduation certificates were truly enough, there would be more graduates with jobs.
For many young Africans, getting a degree represents years of hard work, sacrifice, and expectation. They strongly believe that certificates can open doors that might otherwise remain closed. But a certificate only tells part of the story. It shows what someone studied. But it does not always show how well they can apply what they have learnt.
Our universities give us structure. We have course outlines, assignments, lecturers and examinations to prepare for. There is usually an expected answer.
Life outside the classroom is less predictable.
A job interview can take an unexpected turn. A business idea can fail after months of preparation. A colleague can disagree with you. A client can change their mind. A task can require a skill you have never used before. There is no lecturer coming to explain the question. There is no marking scheme telling you whether you are getting it right.
You have to figure things out. That ability matters.
Learning How to Learn
Perhaps one of the most useful things education can give a young person is the ability to keep learning.
Technology changes. Jobs change. Industries change. The skills needed today may not be the same ones needed several years from now.
Young people need to understand how to find reliable information, ask useful questions, identify credible sources, and learn unfamiliar tools. Not knowing something should not automatically become a reason to stop. It can become the beginning of learning.
You apply for a job and submit your CV. You take part in an interview. But you get rejected, and the position goes to someone else. What next?
Formal education does not always prepare us for rejection. A graduate can send dozens of applications and receive silence. Someone can prepare carefully for an interview and still not get the job. A business owner can invest in an idea that fails. These experiences can be difficult, especially when failure is treated as proof that someone is not good enough.
But failure is not always a verdict. Sometimes, it is information. It can reveal a gap in knowledge, show what needs to change, or force someone to reconsider an approach.
So after every job setback, sit down and ask yourself: What went wrong? Were there questions you could not answer correctly? Was something missing from your pitch? Perhaps you were a little underprepared or lacked some of the information required.
Companies are often looking for individuals who bring a little something extra. Extra initiative. Extra research. Extra skill. Just a little bit extra beyond the school diploma.
Young people need to learn how to recover from disappointment without allowing one setback to define their sense of worth.
There are also skills that become important when young people begin navigating life independently. Financial literacy is one of them. A first salary can disappear quickly between transport, food, data, rent, family responsibilities, and personal needs. Young people need to understand budgeting, saving, debt and responsible spending.
Digital literacy matters too. Being comfortable with social media does not automatically mean knowing how to research properly, protect personal information, use digital tools or recognise misleading content.
Then there is communication. Knowing how to listen, express an idea clearly, handle disagreement and work with people who think differently can determine how useful someone's knowledge becomes.
These skills may not appear on a certificate, but they appear in everyday life.
When the Plan Changes
Not everything is as simple as A to B.
Many young people grow up with a simple plan: Finish school. Go to university. Graduate. Get a job. Build a career. But life does not always follow that sequence.
Sometimes, even after graduating from school, graduates remain unemployed for years. Some discover that the career they studied for is not what they want. Some start businesses and later close them. Others find opportunities they never planned for. Being adaptable in this kind of situation helps a lot. Adaptable means you are able to change direction without believing that your entire life has failed. It means understanding that reaching a goal may require changing the route.
The problem is not that formal education has no value. The problem is that the certificate is treated as though it is the final measurement for readiness.
Young people should understand that they need opportunities to practise the skills they will encounter beyond the classroom. They should be able to work on real problems, manage projects, make decisions, collaborate with others, develop digital and financial skills, and learn from mistakes without being defined by them. Schools, universities, employers, and communities all have a role to play in creating these opportunities.
At Shades of Us, we believe conversations about young people's development should go beyond what is written on a certificate and consider whether young people are actually being equipped for the realities around them. Education should not only prepare young people to answer questions in an examination. It should prepare them to face the questions that come after it.
A certificate may open the door. Only being ‘Extra’ can keep it open.
No comments:
Post a Comment