One of the highlights of my brief career in the insolvency trade came at the start, when I had to assist with a trial. One of the main characters in the trial was an old man who was the client’s interpreter. This old man looked was what you’d call the example of where the real brains and wealth in Singapore happen to be. He dressed like a typical “Ah Pek” (Old Geezer). Standard uniform was shorts and sandals. However, his knowledge of legal affairs happened to be spot on. He could reel off sections of the legal code and identify fraud in documents in a way that would leave the legal professionals stunned. Upon seeing their stunned expressions, his classic line was “Oh, I’m not a lawyer, I’m just a plumber, but I do a lot of plumbing for judges.”
I am reminded
of this old man because he had something that seems to be rather lacking in
today’s information age – curiosity. I’ve sat in too many conversations with “educated”
people who have displayed an amazing ignorance of the world at large. I think
of the Aramco guys I once worked with. They got the shock of their lives when
people were asking them which part of Dubai they came from.
This level of
ignorance about the world is inexcusable. Even if you missed things out at
school, we’re all equipped with smart phones. Short of a total collapse of the
internet, you can literally get whatever basic knowledge you need with a simple
Google search. Yet, despite all of this, our people remain blissfully ignorant
of the world outside their own bauble. The excuse for not knowing basic general
knowledge is inevitably, “I’m not a [insert profession or degree]” or “I’ve
never been to [insert country] or I’ve never worked with people from [insert
country.]”
Having
encountered such levels of ignorance, I’m often curious as to how our education
system managed to call itself “world-class.” Instead of “liberating” people, our
education system has trapped them into little prisms. For example, if you
studied law, all you’re supposed to do is law or if you’ve studied engineering,
all you’re supposed to know is engineering. This mindset gets even worse lower
down the social scale, where if you’re working as a plumber, all you’re
supposed to know is plumbing.
In a way, I can
understand being devoted to your craft. If you go for surgery for example, you
would want your surgeon to be devoted to knowing everything about surgery.
However, in our current age of continuous disruption, being stuck in a cookie
cutter is suicidal. What you do today can always be outsourced to someone
cheaper or to a machine (hence the number of smaller Indian IT firms struggling
to rebrand as “product” companies rather than “service” companies.”) This isn’t
something that you’d expect from our “internet” generation.
I think back to
the old man I used to work with. Sure, he was a plumber but he was a plumber
who kept his ears open. When doing plumbing for judges, he listened to legal
discussions and would read up on things. Hence, whenever he spoke to lawyers,
he spoke to them in a position of strength rather than in a position of “I don’t
know what the f** you’re talking but since I need you, I’ll do as you say.”
Education needs
to move away from giving you a piece of paper that gives you an aid for mental
masturbation and towards an awakening of a need to know more. I think of
someone who once told me that getting a PhD meant that you can go no higher and
compared that with a lecturer who told me that getting a PhD was an awakening to
how much she didn’t know about her chosen subject and therefore had to find out
more.
Too many of us get
caught up with having the paper and not enough of us get excited by the journey
we took to get that piece of paper. We got a skill in learning things. The act
of listening to people and reading is a skill in itself that needs to be valued
more.
This is not to
say that there’s no room for established professionals. If I feel there’s
something wrong with my body, I consult a doctor rather than trying to self-medicate.
However, knowing what I can know about whatever ails me, helps the doctor get
the best possible remedy. Look at lawyers who don’t represent themselves
whenever they end up being sued or charged in court. There’s a reason for it.
The lawyer who hires another lawyer is not less knowledgeable but using his
knowledge to complement another lawyer’s knowledge
The importance
of education is not so much in the output but in the journey that was taken. Life
as a student is not just having papers but the journey to getting knowledge,
which equips people for life.
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