With this issue of the pandemic and as we are currently witnessing the mediocre and sad debate and 2020 U.S. presidential election, marked by fear of the economic future, it has made us see how rapidly labor and professional relations are changing.
While almost every economic sector has been shaken, we are witnessing how the sectors related to remote work, e-commerce and delivery have had a gigantic upturn.
Such a state of affairs has led us to consider our own preparedness to face the changes that are already taking place. Do education systems really prepare the individual to generate the economic means to achieve their full realization?
The myth of the inherently evil entrepreneur
The traditional problem with many public universities in Latin America is their left-wing view, in which there is a dicoto of mine of “classes”. A struggle between the “entrepreneur” and “the rest of us”: students, workers, rural people…
In this black and white view, the employer is seen as “bad” and the rest of the population, the salaried worker is “good.”
That leads to a more or less unconscious rejection of the generation of wealth by a company or enterprise, considering that if it generates money it is because it is taking it from somewhere else: from the pockets of “us”.
We believe that this erroneous view is born of the idea that we have been instilled in since childhood: it is assumed that wealth is finite, limited. In today’s world we see that wealth is not finite.
There are more millionaires than before and the fortunes are also bigger.
On the other hand, a corrupt and evil businessman or banker is not a corrupt and evil businessman, but because of his own personal nature.
That’s why we’re not taught how to be entrepreneurs.
One of the things we consider ourselves apostles of is that the generation a way of life capitalizing on our passions is possible. And not only possible, but easier than ever with the unprecedented access we have to information.
And we believe that those skills can be learned by anyone.
Although they can be learned in a self-taught way, ideally such knowledge should be formally imparted by the education systems.
But in universities, according to our experience, neither in Venezuela, nor in Spain nor in Canada do they teach you how to generate wealth through a personal company, not even in courses and careers in economics, administration, accounting and related.
Rather, they teach you to be an employee, to work in another’s companies, in which you can aspire to occupy positions of greater responsibility (that is, to generate more wealth for the owner) and, in return, to receive a higher salary, which never corresponds to the value of your work or your contribution to the wealth of the owner.
Rich Father, Poor Father
This situation is excellently detailed in the book“Rich Father, Poor Father”by Robert Kiyosaki.
In this partly autobiographical book, Kiyosaki talks about both his parents: his “poor father,” who was his biological father and who was a teacher in Hawaii. A man with studies and very honest, but who instilled in his children that the greatest aspiration was to achieve a “good job” in a good company or institution.
Conversely, his “rich father,” who was the father of his best friend and who was a successful entrepreneur, taught him things like self-taught learning as many useful things as many useful things in a business or industry where you want to thrive, without delving too deeply. His poor father taught him to be a “specialist.”
When you enter to work in a company, your work, your training, the nature of your work is directed to one end: to create wealth for another person or other people.
For that reason, the vast majority of workers find themselves trapped in jobs with no motivation other than monetary, without aspirations, trapped by routine, and ultimately turned into gray, resigned individuals.
And they stop believing the things they believed as young people: that they are able to perform the activities that would lead them to develop their potential and passion.
We are not taught to handle emotions
The education system also does not teach how to handle emotions. To manage frustrations, to overcome resentments (when a resentful person comes to power, it becomes a calamity) or to develop resilience. In short, to recognize, understand and conduct our emotions to make them catalysts for desired changes in our personality and not make them an obstacle to our development and internal development.
This is where the seed of what has come to be called “Emotional Intelligence” is, which was popularized in Daniel Goleman’s 1995 book“The Excited Intelligence”.
In this book, Goleman discusses how Emotional Intelligence, as important as the IQ,allows us to recognize not only our emotions but that of others, building better social relationships.
Human relationships are paramount, and as has been seen in these times for those who could still have some doubt, the dynamics of the modern world increasingly leads us to interact with people of very different backgrounds,culture or beliefs.
Conclusions
We believe that the basic notions to build a company based on values and ethics and that allows you to live from your true passions, is fundamental in the teaching curriculum from elementary school.
For a few decades the “digital nomads” and currently the pandemic, have shown, rather, has reconfirmed, that one of the biggest trends towards which the world moves is to form small groups or monopreneurs that offer their services to international audiences through the internet. This is remote work.
The world’s educational systems must be brought into line with this reality, giving future generations all the tools, both in technical and emotional ability, as well as in ethical values, that an individual needs for its full realization in the twenty-first century.
