Beyond Brexit – the Golden Currency that never goes down in value – even when the pound or the economy does!
Correlation between affluence/education and how people voted in the referendum
At present, the future of the country is uncertain, however, one thing is certain from the analysis of the result of the referendum in newspapers. There is a clear correlation between affluence and how people voted in the referendum. Analysis of the election results indicated that most of those who live in the more deprived part of the country voted for Brexit. Only time will tell if those people have made the right decision for the country or not. What we do know is that many of these people are not highly skilled and they feel it is unfair that immigrants from other countries are driving down wages. Many of these people fear for their jobs as they see immigrants from Eastern Europe and other parts of the world as a threat.
Do the well-educated people feel more secure?
One of the questions to ask is: do the well-educated people feel more secure? Another question is: does a better education insulate you from poverty? Let’s just try and discuss matters around these two questions.
It is rather interesting to see that among doctors, teachers and the highly educated professionals, the vote in favour of the UK remaining in the EU is overwhelming and less of these groups of people voted for Brexit. To generalise, one of the conclusions that I draw from the above two observations is that the better qualified you are, the less likely you are to fear foreigners as people who are taking your job or limiting your life chances. Brexit aside, the better qualified someone is, the more secure they feel in terms of their life prospects, irrespective of the economic situation of the country. It must be said that there is a small minority of people who do not care if the economy goes down and they earn less; what is more important to them is ‘taking back control’, whatever that may mean. For most people, job security and the general economy is a priority for them. I would not like to go too much into the politics of that as, for parents, there are certain things concerning the lives of their children that cannot wait while the politicians sort themselves and the economy out. The needs of our children have to be attended to right now or it’s gone forever.
One currency that does not fluctuate – education
Many worry about what will happen to the currency – the British pound – after Brexit. My view on this is that we all know currency goes up and down all the time as fluctuation occurs in the market. One currency that has a proven track record of providing job security and opportunities in life is that of education. We’ve all heard about people who inherited or who earn several millions and then ended up being poor later in their lives. Education can be regarded as the Golden Currency that remains with you forever and no one can take that away from you.
Our responsibility as a parent is to do the best we can for our children to prepare them for the future, to ensure that they are well equipped, as we do not know the challenges they will face in ten or more years’ time. What is certain is that the better educated they are, the better their life prospects as they are more prepared to cope with most adversaries. As I have already mentioned, education is a complex word and it does not mean just acquiring academic qualifications; however, acquiring academic qualifications is a tested and proven way of filtering and selecting people for jobs and other positions of responsibilities in life. We all know the importance of that and the opportunities that go with it. Another word for filtering or selection is ‘discrimination’ – a rather harsh word but very appropriate if we are to tell the truth about the job market.
What happens if the qualifications that I have become less marketable?
It may be argued that at some point in any economy, the skills required to be more marketable vary as it depends on demand. For example, there was a time in the 90s in which there was a drastic shortage of IT expertise in the economy. More recently in Britain, there is a shortage of medical doctors, nurses and teachers of certain key subjects such as Maths. At one point in time, one particular set of skills and expertise will always be in more demand than others. One thing I know is that those who achieve success and the well-educated people are able to retrain and adapt to the demand of the economy at times when there is less demand for what they had originally trained to do.
Politicians come, and politicians go; the economy goes through its cycle of ups and downs all the time. One thing is certain – the educated people are the ones who always pull the strings. I will actually argue that education makes you happier in life, even in cases where you see less educated people who are very rich, financially. What the educated people often possess is the wealth of knowledge, experiences, and the realisation that they are not inferior to others who may perhaps have a lot more money than them.
In my next blog I will go into more detail about each of the points that I raised in an earlier blog article – those questions relating to the education of young people – for which there are no answers yet.
Please remember to leave a comment and I look forward to speaking to you soon.