Hush puppies.....................................................................................................

Willis & Daniel. ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

I’m sure anyone would agree that education is very important and an indispensable tool in today’s modern world. Without education, I won’t be writing this as a student to address you. Education sharpens our mind, cultivates our soul and liberates us from ignorance. It also happens to be the best Passport to gain employment; the more educated you are, the better the job, the higher the pay, the end to poverty.

Many a politician has waxed lyrical about education laying the very structure our economy is built on;for the driving force of a country’s economy is its workforce, and an uneducated workforce makes for a poor performing workforce. I’m sure most who share their sentiments also tend to define being educated as simply being literate. If that were the case, then it seems most positive for the future that literacy rates have been increasing steadily over the each passing decade; most nations would be powerhouses in their own right because of their ever increasing population of highly educated people, but that hasn’t been the case. Why is that so?

The reason is simple- it’s the quality of education. Education is not just being literate, or being good at academics, education is developing the mind and character. In this pressure cooker society that is Singapore, so much emphasis has been placed on attaining good grades that the other aspects of education have been over looked. Creativity, self expression, morals and ethics are not being given as much priority as more technical subjects such as science and maths. While this approach has worked pretty well in producing high literacy rates in our society, it is not without a downside; with rising literacy rates, it has become increasingly harder for fresh graduates to get jobs as more and more people graduate each year from universities. Employers are now faced with more resumes each year than the year before and have become more particular about who they hire. In a job when a bachelor’s degree was a prerequisite, a masters’ is now required, and one that required a masters’ now requires a PhD. What we’re experiencing now is an academic inflation; it is just not sufficient to have a degree anymore. Is education really the key to ending poverty? Or is it the start of poverty? You will find out soon enough.