Your education is your future

It’s the middle of November. Maybe you still have a lot to do before the end of the year. Maybe most of your projects have been completed. Maybe you are simply on auto pilot, waiting for the December Holidays to start.

This is usually also the time when many people are starting to think about what they are going to do next year. Reflect on what they did and didn’t do this year. Perhaps mostly thinking that time really flies these days.

Mark Twain said to plan for the future because that’s where you are going to spend the rest of your life.

Maybe this time of the year is then a good time to start thinking about your future because if you don’t know where you are going, you may never get there.

What is important for your future?

Whether you want to believe it or not, it is your education.

An old Chinese proverb says, “When planning for a year, plant corn. When planning for a decade, plant trees. When planning for life, train and educate people.”

Unfortunately there seems to be a misperception in South Africa about education and jobs. Many people think that because of the high unemployment rate that they simply won’t be able to find work. So why bother wasting money on an education. Large numbers of High School children are so despondent about their futures that they simply do not care about their studies. They would much rather drop out than finish school. Those who do continue to finish, continue with the “easy” subjects. Mathematical Literacy is now a compulsory subject for matric. BUT many learners would rather go the “easy” route and study mathematical literacy than doing mathematics.

Many High School learners drop Science as a subject. 34 000 learners passed science in 2008. An additional 27 000 learners could have passed based on their marks in other subjects.

 “As the economy moves towards greater capital and skills intensity, the demand for unskilled workers is diminishing.” (McCord & Bhorat, 2003)

“Several research results have shown that the South African economy is in transition towards demand for more skilled than unskilled labour” (Department of Labour, 2011)

According to a report by the Department of Labour you are more likely to find a job if you have a degree or a diploma. (Job Opportunities and Unemployment in the South African Labour Market, Department of Labour, 2011)

The same report states that there are too few South Africans that are working. Only about 40.6% of the total working age group are reported to be employed. The international standard is 60-70%.

This limits the economic growth of the country, because if people aren’t working, they can’t participate in the country’s economy. If the economy doesn’t expand, no new jobs can be created.

Are you guaranteed to find a job if you have a Diploma or a Degree?

Your chances to find a job increases dramatically with a Diploma or a Degree. . You will also have better job security as unskilled or semi -skilled employees are more likely to be retrenched than skilled employees.

All the boring stuff aside, what’s the bottom line?

1.     South Africa has a skills shortage.  

“A skills shortage occurs when any one of the following situations arises or a combination of them: shortage of workers in a particular occupation, labour demand exceeds availability of skills, or workers lack appropriate qualifications.” (Barnow, Trutko & Robert, 1998; Sha & Burke, 2003; Trendle, 2008)

2.     People with Degrees or Diplomas are more likely to find a job or to be employed.

3.     South Africa is moving towards a services industry that requires more skilled workers.

In 2010 South Africa required 16 times more engineers than what the education system produced.

That’s all well and fine, but what should I study?

In an ideal world everybody should be able to study what they want to, and be assured to find a job. Unfortunately this is not always the case.

Firstly, FINISH MATRIC. If you are able to, finish it with mathematics and science. I know some people are not able to do this, BUT remember there’s a difference between being lazy and inability. More career opportunities and directions, such as engineering,  will be possible if you pass your matric with science and mathematics.

Secondly, study towards a Diploma or a Degree. According to the 2010/11 Job Opportunity Index most job openings required post-grade-12-qualifications and some experience. These job opportunities mostly existed for Managers, Professionals, Clerical and administrative workers and Technicians and trade workers.

Thirdly, start to build your experience. Take any job in your field, even if you have to start at a level below the bottom.  I read a posting a while ago from a student who had finished his studies with a University. He complained that the only jobs he could find were low ranking, low paying jobs and that he was not going to work for such a salary.

If you don’t start somewhere, what are you going to build on?

Finally, enhance your skills with short courses, skills programmes and or higher qualifications (Post graduate studies).

I know this is an old cliché but it is and stays true:

“Your future is what YOU make of it, but we all have to start somewhere.”

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Here we are on the eve of Bandana day (12^th October 2011), and I found myself knowing that we are supporting a good cause that has something to do with cancer by simply buying a bandana. But I didn’t really know what it was about. Being my natural self I set myself the task to find out why I bought this bandana.

Who is the Sunflower Fund and what do they do?

The Sunflower Fund was formed in 1999 in support of the South African Bone Marrow Registry (SABMR). The SABMR need donors from all ethnic groups. The SABMR basically need a list of well-informed ethnically diverse potential donors that meet the national and international requirements in order to improve the chances of life-saving transplants for serious blood disorder sufferers.

There is about a 1 in 100 000 chance of finding a compatible donor. So in order for the Registry to function effectively at least 100 000 potential donors are needed but ideally the Registry should have 400 000 donors that is representative of all ethnic groups.

If you want to be a donor you need to complete a Sunflower/SABMR registration form. They will process this form and make sure that you meet the criteria. They will then direct you to the closest Donor Recruitment Clinic where they will take a small blood sample. The blood sample is then analysed (called tissue typing) and put on the national database.

You could be the match for someone with leukaemia or other life threatening blood disorders. You may well be the only person in the world who can provide that match and save a life!

So, why do we buy the bandanas then?

Because the Sunflower Fund needs money to run their operation! Regrettably neither the SABMR nor the Sunflower receives any government funding. It cost money to maintain the SABMR. Tissue typing costs around R1000 per person. If the SABMR do not receive funds from you and me, the whole operation will come to a grinding halt.

To summarise then:

·         The Sunflower Fund support the SABMR

·         The Sunflower Fund educate and recruit suitable Bone Marrow donors

·         The Sunflower Fund needs money to do this.

Find out more by visiting their website.

BMT College has decided that we want to donate R50 000 towards this Fund. Show us your support by liking our page.

For every like that we have at midnight on the 31^st of October 2011 the College will donate R1, up to R50 000.

If you want to do more than this, visit the Sunflower Fund’s website and check out the How to Help section.

How does one measure success?

Success depends on the decisions we make and the opportunities we use and the chances we take. More than often sustained success depends on our ability to adapt to different situations and a lot of the time to think outside the box. Unfortunately “thinking outside the box” has almost become a worn phrase and a lot of the time this still has to be done within certain constraints. And how does one really start to think outside the box? Obviously the box is there for a reason. But we have to start somewhere, and sometimes it helps just to get the neurons firing in different directions.

For instance, let’s start with something simple such as: How many sides does a circle have? Some people may answer “one” and some people may answer “two” (outside and inside). Although this may pose a problem when it comes to other geometrical shapes, such as a rectangle, because suddenly the trusty old rectangle suddenly has eight sides and not four anymore. Continuing with the example we may now remember that a corner on the inside of the rectangle is 90° and the outside angle is 270°. This poses the question, if the inside of the circle is 360°, how many degrees is the outside of the circle? You wouldn’t believe how many people get that one wrong. Confucius may have said that if he gives a student one corner of a lesson and the student can’t find the other three then the lesson is not worth teaching, but it may have been that the lesson was taught wrong. 

Bottom line, even if we do think outside the box we still have to apply normal rules. It helps to think of the impossible though, as the white queen so aptly said to Alice: “Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Although, it has to be said, we tend to forget another truism said by the queen, “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.” Although, to be fair, in the sense of the book Lewis-Carol probably meant something else, we can still apply this in our lives. We sometimes forget to apply the lessons of the past to our futures. We tend to wanting to open the box with the crowbar that is inside.

We all probably heard the riddle, or some variant thereof, of the guy who travelled with a fox, a chicken and a bag of corn and the dilemma of transporting them across a river with a boat that can only carry the guy and one of the items. Normally the question is how do get them all safely across without the chicken eating the corn or the fox eating the chicken. From a business point of view, we may want to ask if we can perhaps sell the guy a bigger boat. Or even establish some sort of ferry service that ensures the safe transport across the river, for a nominal fee of course! The next logical question may be as to why this guy is travelling with a fox, a chicken and a bag of corn. If we understand our customer, we understand what his or her needs are. The result is us giving our customers a better service.

South Africa has a very diverse population. At just over 45 million it is not always possible to cater for everyone and understand everyone’s needs. But this old country of ours sure lends itself to many opportunities. For instance some of the features of South Africa include:

·         The longest wine route in the world (R62 wine route)

·         The largest green canyon in the world (Blyde River Canyon)

·         One of only twelve countries in the world that supplies drinkable tap water of which the quality is the third best in the world

·         The first, largest and most viable oil-from-coal refinery that also supplies 40% of our petrol

·         Being the second largest exporter of fruit

·         That Gauteng has the most advanced infrastructure in Africa

·         Deserts, mountains, escarpments, plateaus, grasslands, bush, wetlands and subtropical forests.

We also have the only street in the world to house to Nobel Peace Prize winners, namely Vilakazi street in Soweto which has house owned by former president Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

This is all good and well, but without the knowledge and ability to make use of the opportunities that is presented to us, it will go to waste. We need to make use of real knowledge and not rely on general misconceptions that we all just believe because it is so easy to do. For instance, contrary to popular believe, ostriches do not stick their heads in the sand, ever. The saying, “It’s raining cats and dogs” were not derived from sub-standard building practices in the middle ages. Remember the e-mail you got regarding “Life in the 1500’s”? Really, think about it. How many times have you seen your pets clambering for space on the roof when it starts to rain?

We need innovators. We need leaders. We need people who can think outside the box. Even though we have produced our fair share of innovators, leaders and business people, we need more. We need people who are worth their salt. Even though this is a well-established idiom, let’s just think where it comes from, because, let’s be honest, salt is not the most expensive item on the shopping list.

The Roman army considered salt to be such a necessity that their soldiers were either issued regular rations of salt or paid a special salt allowance in order to buy their own. This was called a “salarium”. One does not need to be an etymologist to derive that this gave us the English word “salary”.

There is one question we can ask at different times of the day, and always get a different but correct answer. BMT College asks one question and always unconditionally expects the same answer:

“Will our students be worth their salt once they graduate?”

“Yes.”

Jako Poolman
Vice-Principal: BMT College