When cancer patients are declared cancer-free, a process of callous neglect is started that doesn't acknowledge the physical and emotional trauma of treatment or the long, often painful and usually slow process that is misleadingly known as 'recovery. Instead of counselling (all but the luckiest of) patients that they may experience depression, exhaustion and stalled progress, patients are merrily told 'go now, you're (cancer-) free! Live your life! Be happy!'
Clearly, a PhD is NOT like living with cancer, but the after care is comparable. We are told 'go, be free! The world is yours!' The reality is quite different. The application inbox for unpaid internships of UN, EU institution and many other sector jobs is populated with PhD grads. What's that all about? Marx shone a spotlight on the exploitation of workers by capitalism. Throughout much of the late 19th and early-to-mid 20th Centuries, workers worldwide rose up to demand better conditions and reasonable pay. Countries shackled by exploitation threw off their colonial masters and tried to build a better, fairer future for all. And now, in the rich countries of the free world, workers of all levels of qualification, experience and sector, are required to give their labour for free. And we're all okay with that?? Which of these great, proud companies and institutions will stand up in this, the second decade of the 21st Century, and say 'we will not exploit our workers. Your intellect, your struggle, your labour and your lives have value. As long as we exist, we refuse to employ slaves. We will not steal the labour of our beating heart'? Are there no institutions in our free world who will put their principles to the test of fair and equal treatment? You trained us. You told us to go out and do our best, invest in our futures. And your thanks is to steal the best that we have. Welcome to the free world of the 21st century. What's free? Your labour and plenty of lies.
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There seems to be a teeny-tiny yawning chasm between some peoples' realities. What's that? You want evidence? Okay, I'll explain. At a university job-advice meeting last year, a well-meaning Prof quipped that we really shouldn't worry so much about the job market. Jobs would come, he said, and in the meantime, 'it's a rite of passage to live off pot noodles for a couple of years'. Hmm. Caveat: this Professor really was well-meaning (is still - he's still alive, despite the heart-attack-inducing stress of academic life). Somehow, he always managed to make time to advise PhD students. He was a human, in a mostly not-human environment, where most supervisors were as cuddly as a gravel bed, and Prof-bots masqueraded as actual people with functioning blood-streams, pumped by living hearts. But this does shine a light on the gulf between different peoples' experiences. Maybe it was easier, back whenever he was an aspiring academic, to make that leap between 'notice me: I've got a PhD' and 'I'm a Professor now: bow before me and tremble'. But now, it's about much more than managing your food budget. Don't get me wrong: I like pot noodles as much as the next broke gourmand. But it's about so much more than our dinner choices. No matter how many pot noodle dinners I choose over Wagyu Beef, the pennies saved are not going to pay my rent for the maybe two (maybe more) years it will take me to build a publication profile deep and extensive enough for me to make the shortlist for all those over-subscribed Assistant Professor/Research Associate/Post-Doctoral positions. It's not about tightening your belt or cutting your coat to suit your cloth. It's about there not being enough jobs, so that after dragging yourself on your elbows for five (six, seven) years to get those skills that make you credible, you find that bar set another notch higher than you can reach. School doesn't teach us the things we really need to survive the modern world. Formal education, that long process of going to school every day in the morning, going to classes, doing homework and taking exams, doesn't teach us the skills and knowledge we need to live with dignity, with physical and emotional balance, with humanity. It might teach us how to compete and frequently it teaches us how to fail (yes, Zizek-quoting-Beckett, you MIGHT have a point that we can also learn to fail, fail again, fail better..... but a lot of the time we just fall down, get up and fall back down again). Here are some of the essential things in life that schools don't teach:
Schools don't teach us to care for nature and to live with ecological sustainability. They don’t teach you how to find a job, how to get financial security. They don't teach us how to respect and care for the elderly. They don’t teach you how to find dignity. They don’t teach you how to look after yourself, plan for your future, secure your old age care. They don’t teach you how to care for others, for partners, for children, for dependants. They don’t teach you how to love, how to understand each other. They don’t teach you how to be a woman. They don’t teach you how to be a man. They don't teach us how to be socially, racially or sexually equal (no matter whether we wear skirts or trousers to class). They don’t teach you to care for animals. They don’t teach you how to listen to and respect your global neighbours. The point is not that education is currently SUPPOSED to provide skills for these things - the point is that the things we are taught at school do not equip us for real life, and that the whole purpose of education needs to be re-thought. My underlying point is: what goals should society have? What objectives do education systems currently have and should they be different? So what am I suggesting: that schools teach children the art of love? Partly, yes, but more specifically that schools should equip people for the realities of social and economic life. Incidentally, is Scotland the most sexually egalitarian society in the Western world? After all, the men there wear skirts and trust me, they are sexy as hell.... I had a flash of inspiration last night, in the depths of despair that I know so well: that school doesn't teach us what we need for life - to succeed, to survive with dignity. It doesn't teach us how to get a job, how to keep a job, what to do when the job ends (redundancy, end of contract, no more funding). It doesn't teach us how to be financially secure, how to plan for financial security for 5 years, twenty years, fifty years. It doesn't teach us how to support ourselves, or how to support dependents - out of work spouse or children.
It doesn't teach us how to be equal, women to men, men to women. Some (many?) women are still taught subliminally (or explicitly?) that it's a sustainable and expectable path to get married, have children (or not) and be supported by a man. But the days when men were paid a salary that supported a whole family for life, are for many long-gone, and for those that remain, dwindling. The women who think, subliminally, that their income is less important because the man will be the bread winner, are ill-equipped with skills, values and understanding of how to really be equal. This in itself creates inequality. I am a PhD graduate with awards for research and teaching, as well as reams of academic, professional, and what is generally called life experience all over the world. I had an excellent education, first at private secondary schools in Switzerland, Hong Kong and Britain, then an undergraduate degree in China and the UK, followed by a Master’s in Austria, and finally a doctorate in Hong Kong and Indonesia. Add to that running an NGO, starting my own company, and working for two blue chip firms. A pretty good base, one would think, for success. Not so. The whole of my adult life has been a struggle, professionally speaking. Getting and keeping a job has been a constant recurring problem. I’ve been made redundant when departments were shut down, hired on one year renewable contracts that predictably expired. I’ve tried all sorts of creative approaches, from starting my own company (I can’t exactly terminate my own employment contract from that, can I?) to reinventing myself through very expensive and intellectually (not to mention physically and emotionally) demanding further education. And here I am, at 41, no pension (cashed that in when I left Hong Kong, to partially fund, but barely make a dent in, my Master’s, for which I am now deeply and probably terminally indebted to my husband and my father), no job, no savings. I am financially entirely dependent on my husband, whose own savings are now dwindling, along with his confidence in a secure, comfortable after-work life. Wait, so what am I saying? It seems like the more qualified, skilled and, frankly, brilliant I get (don't judge me - this trumpet I'm blowing is an ironic one), the narrower my options become. That's not what the 'work hard, be visionary and you can achieve anything' dream sold me..... |
AuthorHow to identify myself... a deeply concerned citizen of a fucked-up world, swinging with circadian regularity between esprit de vie and deep, black despair. PhD, entrepreneur, author, international experience, woman (should I add chromosomes to my list of qualifications....?) Archives
May 2020
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