Stop Attending Motivational Conferences and Start Building Skills
It recently dawned on me that I spent 18 years of my life growing up and not acquiring any relevant skills for life. That was a sad day for me.
Growing up in Akwatia, a mining town in the Eastern Region of Ghana, most kids my age spent their days in a patterned cycle. I lived in a big compund house with about seven nuclear families. From Mondays to Fridays, you wake up and the first thing on your mind is school. I was an early riser, but for one cousin of mine, his mom had to wake him up on most days because his sleep was never enough for him. I’d then rush to take a warm morning bath, take breakfast if available and make the forty-or-so-minutes journey to school. I attended St. Dominic’s Roman Catholic School, an “elite school” in the town which meant I had much more learning opportunities and better exposure than other kids who attended the “sytos.” I actually started in a syto before being moved to my new school. I thank God for my grandma who made that decision to take me to a better school. God bless her memory.
School was a place to be taught, do academic exercises and take home assignments, with extracurricular activities strewn in between. Most extracurricular activities were of the students’ own initiative. The boys would play football or play “cats and dogs” and the girls would play ampe or softer games like gossiping — oh did I say that? — or knitting handicrafts. Upon reaching home after the 1-hour trek from school, it was time for “Courage the Cowardly Dog” and some few other cartoons, then maybe some household chores, time for study and homework, some more TV and then you retire to bed. There was also the occasional time with friends.
Saturdays were the days we could have a more romantic time with our beds. Depending on where you grew up, you could go to the farm to weed and carry firewood or farm produce with other members of the household or you could go for an event at the Efua Sutherland Children’s Park or sit by your Pentium II PC and explore the “machine” every kid aspired to have one he could call his own. Those were not days of the internet so there was a limit to what you could do with your PC. You mostly toyed around with pre-installed programmes, learned how to type with Mavis Beacon or played Super Mario or Mortal Combat. On Sundays, the whole family goes to church, you come back to watch some more TV, eat, read and sleep. Then the cycle repeats itself.
The family, school and church (or whichever religious organisation your family was a part of) did very little in helping us acquire relevant skills for life. Growing up as kids, most of us chose one of four prestigious professions: Doctor, Lawyer, Business Man or Engineer; and got so infuriated when someone said “You, you will become a carpenter” or “As for Kojo, he will do shumiker.” The most important institutions for raising and socialising the kid of school going age never prioritised skills acquisition. There were no curriculums, programmes or institutions dedicated to teaching skills to young people. Why? Because we were all being trained for one of the jobs that has always been: white-collar jobs and their less-preferred blue counterparts.
A lot has changed since then. We are now seeing a number of institutions, social establishments and not-for-profits teaching skills to kids and teens. Curriculums that make the learning experience more fun and diverse are being created and incorporated into some segments of our educational system. But as a nation, we are not there yet. No, not at all. There is still so much work to be done. We will have arrived when every child no matter what school he attends or the financial strength of her family, can access such opportunities. That is why I applaud the works of social enterprises such as Butterfly Effect Ghana (where I work), Teach for Ghana and Chalkboard Education.
So back to my sad day when I realised I had not learnt relevant skills growing up. I remember one time when I was about fourteen years old, an optimistic kid ready to learn something new and interesting. I expressed a keen interest in learning how to play the organ (keyboard) at church, but there was no structure in place and no one willing to help poor little Kofi learn a skill he so wanted to learn. As kids, there were so many hard skills we hoped to learn. This included learning how to type, learning how to play a musical instrument or a sports and enjoying the fun of making crafts with our hands. But as we got to know of what we could learn and enjoy, we came to the realisation that there was little or no help for us to acquire these skills, so we just gave up and let our dreams die. Virtually none of my mates who said they wanted to be pilots or scientists have realised their childhood ambitions. Why? Beacause we didn’t provide environments for them to nurture their dreams.
For me, one solace I had growing up with few learning opportunities was the joy of studying what I was taught in school and my love for reading as a hobby. This earned me the name Kofi Booklong, a name given to me by my Grandma and which she fondly called me on most days. That is certainly one good skill my “boring introverted childhood” made me acquire, and maybe, just maybe I’m doing something good with it. I was thinking of how if my parents or school had intentionally helped me learn relevant skills, I would have been all the much better today. I think of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule. I wonder what skill or pursuit I’ve committed 10,000 hours for.
There were three vacations within the year (each of which lasted for about a month). Imagine if each of these months had been used to acquire one skill (or a whole year to learn and perfect a skill). Just imagine! I’d have been great at about 18 different disciplines by now. Which would have made me all the more better as an individual trying to accomplish purpose and achieve significance in this life. Of course, I wouldn’t have been able to make time to use all of these skills, particularly in the area of career. But I would have relished practising these skills in my free time, which all add up to a more beautiful and fulfilling life. Yes, some would have automatically fallen along the way, but I would definitely have used at least one of them to start a business or build my career.
This is why I am calling for a skills acquisition revolution. Our world probably wouldn’t have been blessed with the works of Bill Gates (Coding) or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Creative Writing) if they had not been introduced to their respective disciplines and mentored to master them. Let’s help kids learn because that is what they enjoy doing. A child is able to learn four languages concurrently before he turns five. Try it as an adult and see how much more difficult (almost impossible) it is. The first two decades of any person’s life is a time of learning. Let’s redirect the focus of kids from trivialities and let’s help them build skills that they will find very useful when they grow up. If we help them use this time of their lives to acquire relevant skills, build themselves and just make learning an unending fun experience for them, imagine where we’ll get to as a nation.
As many graduates come out of university looking for non-existent jobs, they resign to a state of idleness or take unsatisfying jobs because they have no relevant skill to build a business from. Motivational conferences (and generally talk events) are at an all-time high in our nation. I’ve been in circles of putting these programs together and I know the value of such events. Though these events are inspiring people to do something meaningful with their lives through inspiring stories, motivational talks, and networking opportunities, I think it is time for us as millennials to stop hopping from one motivational summit to another and begin a process to acquire skills we can do something meaningful with. It’s not too late. You can learn and perfect one skill each year starting 2016. Try this and see how your life will be all the much better in the next four years. Don’t you think it’s time for us to move from being consumers of technology and all the goodies from the developed nations and start building our own industries and products we need? Think on these things.
A quick Google search gave me a list of skills (both soft and hard skills) which I have edited to get those skills relevant for us in Ghana and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Communication skills, Critical thinking skills, Reading skills, Writing skills, Programming (Coding), Personal finance and investment skills, Learning an additional language, Painting, Typography, Graphic design, Interior design, Making clothes, Fixing hair, Culinary skills, People skills, Skating, Surfing, Tennis, Cycling, Fixing a car, Fixing common household gadgets, Painting, Photography, Animation, Digital art and Illustration, Handicrafts, Gardening, Self-defense skills, Swimming, Piano, Guitar, Drums, Salsa, Flute, Violin, Image and Video editing, Microsoft Office, Time management, Decision-making skills, etc, etc.
Glossary
syto: a common term for under-resourced and under-performing public schools in Ghana
cats and dogs: aggressive play among boys with no intent on harming one another
shumiker: a colloquial reference to the profession of a shoe maker, which is how Ghanaians call cobblers who move from house to house to mend shoes
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