Getting the best grades does not mean having a better life. Choosing the career chosen by higher-level records does not mean having a higher quality job. Aspiring to a good job (becoming a good employee) should not be the aspiration of those who stand out. On the other hand, being good at science does not imply any superiority compared to someone who is good at art, literature, music or athletics. Science degrees do not guarantee a better life or a better job than arts degrees. However, the ten degrees most coveted by young people are published and eight of them are in science. Chance? What’s up, ideology.
In Spanish education there is a stigma about thought, creation and words. A prejudice that has been politically reinforced. Students are made to believe that science people are smarter and that they will do great in life. Well: this is an ideological construction and, as such, as true or false as each person wants to believe. It would be more honest, before biasing the decisions of youth, to invite them to think about what a better life is. And educate them at the same time in the idea that, most of the time, it has nothing to do with a higher grade.
From Plato to today, the good thing for each person is to do what they like the most. In fact, discovering what each person likes is always more profitable—also more difficult—than doing what is supposed to have “more job opportunities.” What I am trying to say is that being able to be yourself is, in all cases, the most efficient option personally, materially and intellectually. Now, how is being yourself similar to a resume? In nothing. And yet, can a kid with an average of 13 feel that he is missing something if he chooses a career with a cut-off grade of 6? Unfortunately if. Can a young philosophy lover believe that she will “starve” to study what she likes? Affirmative. Is this true? We have no idea. But we make that young woman feel that it is.
Well, after fighting with the scientific-technical bias, the students will have to get rid of the gender bias, according to which the careers they choose have a better future than those they choose. Thus, it is regretted that girls’ access to engineering is still only 20%, but no one reflects on the very few boys who access careers such as Psychology, Social Work, Early Childhood Education or Health Sciences. In these degrees it does not seem urgent to compensate for gender bias, they are “girls’ degrees”, that is, “worse”. Surely an engineer will earn more than a psychologist? Which will be most in demand in 2030? Will AI become our psychologist?
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Political power imagines the world of work as a scientific-technical environment led by competitive and quantifying men and women (“the best”), who base their decisions on competition and not cooperation. And educate young people to imagine it that way. A future led by big data, statistics, risk analysis and technological surveillance. In this context, the most ambitious choice seems to me to be one of those that have no exit, free of political and economic biases. As incredible as it may seem to us today, the future is never where the past expects it.
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