By Malek Arol Dhieu
It’s difficult to measure education in South Sudan because “some” graduates appear educated when far and uneducated when they prove their graduateship. I don’t know what kind of version in education makes graduates strong in paper work and weak in verbal work. It’s undeniable that the academic credentials speak before the graduates in the offices they are submitted in, but when the shortlisted graduates come later for an interview, you may think they had borrowed other people’s academic credentials to escape nullification during shortlisting.
They construct sentences that may be invented in 50 years’ time later and categorize under 9th part of speech. It is what you do that you speak and it is what you speak that you do, but I do not understand why some graduates are brilliant in written interviews and more than ‘weak’ in oral interviews. In most circumstances, you are not given a pen and paper to write but you are asked to speak verbally, that’s to say, a fluent speaker is always preferable to fluent writer.
Neutral people often say correct English use isn’t a measure of education, otherwise people would go for English courses and get back to seek for jobs without specialising in different fields, but I hold the view that fluency in English is the key that unlocks your specifications and opens other people’s minds to understand you to that extent they may regret for not having specialized in the same field you have specialised in. But if you only know your technical work in your field, how would you inspire your clients and students studying the same course?
What inspires people to mention your name on occasions is what comes out of your mouth and how you flavour it. However, not all the graduates are fluent in English, some speak fluent English more than those who interview them in offices, and more superbly, more than encyclopaedians. Some of the graduates are even far much better than their tutors. Even if you’re in the recognized learning institution, that institution can’t baptize you in the name of English, eight parts of Speech and M.S Patel, Amen.
You must learn communication skills so as to become double-edged swords. Having ascertained that what makes graduates loiter for a number of months or even years are only the unpresentability and lack of vacancies as retirement is ineffective, the competition between the job seekers and employers is a competition between a pregnant and lactating mother because both of them are vulnerable. Employers are lactating mothers meanwhile job seekers, whom this article refers to as graduates, are pregnant mothers, and when such vulnerable people stage a competition, spectators can’t cease laughing because they will compete in a competition destined only for a draw.
The employers narrow the roads of employment following the fear that they may be outsmarted by their employees, and that, they invented a new version of employment which only allows them employ relatives, best friends and concubines. When you are in need of something and it has taken you too long to get it, you must refine your attitudes by taking a look at yourself to correct what fails you to get your wants and needs.
Something must be behind the “come tomorrow” often said to job seekers, and that thing must be eradicated by competence and presentability. To graduates whose headaches are only to get jobs, you must become South Sudanese-English to win those jobs.
The author is a medical student, University of Juba.