Why school curricula should be work-oriented – Rick Little

You speak about factors that must be employed by young people in any form of engagement they find themselves. Do you see these factors working for youth based-groups as well?I think LEAP is a good example of a youth-based group. It takes leadership and partnership that work, especially with civil society organizations and nongovernment organisations. […]

You speak about factors that must be employed by young people in any form of engagement they find themselves. Do you see these factors working for youth based-groups as well?
I think LEAP is a good example of a youth-based group. It takes leadership and partnership that work, especially with civil society organizations and nongovernment organisations. In other words, a youth-driven programme will not just succeed because somebody is there providing the resources but with a strong commitment from young people, leadership skills from the entrepreneurs and social innovators and most importantly, what you do with opportunities you are provided with.

Knowledge and application of skills are some of the prerequisites you mentioned as key to young person’s growth, but would you say much is being done for young persons in this regard?
Most people think education is power and most education programmes are built around the concept of imparting knowledge. The schools are built and the teachers are trained to impart knowledge but often lack the skills to impart that knowledge. And to me that is very interesting because when you look at the term ‘education’ from the Latin word it emanates from, education means to ‘draw from’ and not ‘put out’. If you look at many educational systems, you will find a situation where the teacher does 99% of talking while the students on their own lack capacity to learn because they are not engaged. But we all know that all of us, including young people, learn best when we are engaged. So when we think about knowledge, it has to do with skills we need to acquire in our daily lives.

Are you saying knowledge being imparted in schools is of little relevance these days?
First of all, I think young people should be employable. There are sets of skills that young people are supposed to learn but a lot of people are not learning. Learning that will equip you for the market place is really important. Unfortunately, many schools in many countries do not have in their curricula and are not teaching students skills that prepare their graduates for the job market. So, we have so many young people across the world, not just in Nigeria alone, who are graduating from schools with degrees from universities, secondary schools and vocational schools but are not equipped with life skills that are necessary. Part of education, improvement and reform is that as a young person, you need to start thinking outside the box, beyond education.
In a way that you will be asking yourself the frank question that: as a young person, what will it take for me to work for myself rather than working for other people? What will it mean to be an entrepreneur? What will it mean to work on my own or to go into partnership with other young people to create something special? So, self-employment and livelihood, I believe, is indeed part of the game.

But can we really say youths are truly being mentored to understand that life doesn’t begin and end with academic certificates?
I think the short answer to that is no. I know there are many young people outside the fence looking and figuring out how to get into the game. But they don’t find the way in. They don’t have a mentor and they don’t have someone in their lives who is truly mentoring them. I have a belief that the single most important thing that a young person needs to have is not a new programme but a relationship with an adult who is committed to his or her success. There is nothing wrong in loving young people. When you love a person you sometimes find it difficult to make them unlovable anymore.
When you are irrationally committed to them, young people who have such an adult whether it is their parents, their uncle, an aunt or their grandparents, a teacher, among others, they succeed. They really need that more than education, more than the school and more than their studies. I know many people around the world who are school leavers and have made tremendous success in their lives and that is because they have an adult who worked with them, talked to them, gave them the skills, taught them discipline, advised them and [gave] the incentives that made them prosperous. So for me, mentoring is really important.

Apart from mentoring, don’t you think socio-political environment also has significant influence?
There is no doubt about that. The socio-political environments under which young people grow up do have significant influence on their lives. I have been to 117 countries and I know that culture and politics within which young people grow up have great influence on them. But you can still make it successful, if you work with an adult regardless of the cultural or political environment you grow up from.
Of course, it is different from one country to the other but one has to understand the relationship that exists between the young people and the adult, and this also grows into the kind of political environment existing there. But regardless of what happens, we need to help young people outside the politics and governance system in place.

What would you say to the growing number of young people who feel frustrated and think their life isn’t worth living?
There are millions of young people around the world who live in darkness. They live behind closed doors or lock themselves up because they don’t know what they will come home to at the end of the day. It may be that such persons live in violence prone environments. But I think it is important that someone helps remove the person from such an environment or that they remove themselves from such environments.
There are many instances of that. And my own is one of them. But I chose to stay within such an environment and I found a way to protect myself.  But in some cases such may not be possible. So I don’t like giving a general answer to that question because I do realize that it is really down to individual circumstance. But what saved me was an adult from a youth programme who saw my need. I don’t know how he saw my need but he did and he kept showing up in my school programmes, my athletics and all of that.
He was always there and kept showing up. Even though we met at a Christian programme, he didn’t even mention God even as we are all relating together. To me, he is a typical example of unconditional love because he kept helping me without attaching any condition or trying to win me over to something. He continuously worked with me, consistently let me realise that I have options. So, in the middle of darkness people need to be informed that they have other options to take.

To beat the challenge of graduates not being relevant in the job market, what do you think should be done?
I think partnership between schools, training facilities including universities is important. Too many universities are completely disconnected from the private sector. And it is important that the education being provided in our school is connected with private sector. It ought not to be a warehouse that puts out something called graduates irrespective of the fact that people want to buy that products or not.  We are looking out for how to build systemic skills.
Wouldn’t it make sense that we find out from employers who are to employ these graduates? Whether it is government establishments, multinational organisations, business enterprises, what are the skills you are looking for? Then as education institutions, we begin to start training young people on the skills such employing organizations are in need of.
Unfortunately, there are many places across the world where they have initiated adopt-a-school programme. But I personally don’t subscribe to this paternalistic idea. I will rather call for partnership between the schools and the employing organizations. To me, that works better than adopt-a-school initiative.