Your degree is just a piece of paper, your education is seen in your behavior...

Of course it is important to be qualified. Study means something more than skill. It means an understanding of the ethos, the values, and the purpose of the subject of study. It is not about mugging something up to get through the exam. It is about encouraging the intellect to gain an overview of the situation. Someone trained for a certain task may perform the task well. Promoted, they will be confronted by problems requiring perspective of a kind that task-training cannot offer. But practical qualifications, the proven ability to do something, may imply an advanced awareness that may be the more impressive for being learned by experience, by personal discovery rather than simply repeating the accepted formula.

To put another way: every newly-qualified professional knows that there is a lot to learn as they sit the other side of the desk for the first time. They may be addressed as "sir" or "madam"by people twice their age. But we know on whose experience the newly-qualified will rely. The most foolish thing ever said to me was, You’re qualified: you shouldn’t have any problems.’ Knowing is not doing. There is no doing without the knowledge, but learning is gained, at least in part, by doing.

Others of his generation undertook all manner of work that today would be the exclusive province of the professionally-qualified. Yet society functioned with these people in charge. Of course many who had never been near a university did have an advanced education. Often it was through evening classes. Sometimes it was in a technical institute that was the foundation of a modern university. This was an education integrated within the conventions of work and living in a community. In one respect the socially-integrated education was more fulfilling than formal study in a specific locale. Knowledge and skills were gained as part of ordinary life, not as a privileged access to a higher social stratum.

Education should not be regarded as a privilege. It is a necessity. A qualification should not be a mark of superiority but, rather, of service. Knowledge and skills need to be for the social enrichment of everyone, not the personal enrichment of the advantaged.

Saturday is a good day to look back at the week and think about all the good things you have done. I wish you a weekend so full of satisfaction and inspiration...

Elias Sassine