As I went to the college library with Felicity earlier this week, I stumbled upon a display set up to celebrate International Day of Education, which takes place every 24th of January.
I had no idea of such a thing until then!
Whilst UNESCO dedicates this Day in 2025 to Artificial Intelligence, the theme Chichester College has chosen for this year is about the role education and teachers play in countering hate speech. The librarians work actively to foster an inclusive culture at the college.
They set their mission as to challenge the systemic inequalities that exist in our society, in terms of race, gender, social class and learning abilities.
So the display presented a number of books about that theme.
The theme I’ve chosen to write about is even closer to my heart.
As a fan of Carl Jung, I smiled at the synchronicity when I watched The Devil Wears Prada with Fe last Tuesday.
Although the primary motive was that she’s off next week to London with her class to watch the musical, I rediscovered in this film some extraordinary echoing to what I want to address as part of my new services to young adults.
As Fe and I were bewildered by Meryl Streep (who superbly plays the horrible boss Miranda Priestly) bullying her work entourage, in particular a young Anne Hathaway and a young Emily Blunt, I had some vivid flashbacks from my early career.
I realised how, despite my degree in Business Administration from a high ranking French business school, I was so poorly equipped with what they call ‘the soft skills’.
At first I didn’t see the bullying, the passive aggressive comments and behaviour, the gaslighting that I was subjected to. Or perhaps I did see it, as I could recognise bits from family arguments, but I didn’t know how to deal with it.
At the time I often thought I was the one who had the problem. The boss is right, right?
And because of that, I reproduced that behaviour with those who worked in my team when I started managing people.
These are the roots of a toxic work culture, and I want to sincerely apologise to whomever I hurt in displaying such behaviour. I am also very aware that those who inflicted this on me were a lot of the time reproducing stuff that they had been subjected to before me. That doesn’t justify any of these behaviours, but it’s helpful to recognise that we carry a lot from past generations.
Reflecting upon those years has led me to these thoughts:
1. When we are not at our core grounded in self confidence, our insecurity makes us fall prey to abusive behaviour, in all aspects of life: work, family, relationships.
On the contrary, when we know our worth, we can create healthy boundaries more easily and respond accordingly to unacceptable behaviour.
Knowing our worth starts by recognising our natural strengths, our innate gifts and choosing a path that will make the best use of them.
2. Education is not just about the technical skills and the academic skills, it is about those ‘soft skills’ too. We need these soft skills to function in a group, in a team, in society.
Research on the new generations entering the workforce is rather worrying.
I recently read that whilst people from Generation Z impress prospective employers with their technical skills and digital fluency, they seem to lack crucial organisational and interpersonal skills.
This is not only a major barrier to their success in the workplace, it is also a huge concern for employers, as it hampers the overall organisational effectiveness.
Now let’s be clear: we, the earlier generations, brought up the young adults that are labelled as GenZ. It is us who collectively agreed (not saying anything about it is a tacit agreement) that STEM was THE way forward for success and progress. And before that, it was countless generations who put the intellect on such a pedestal, compared to other forms of intelligence, like emotional and spiritual intelligence.
So let’s not point the finger at those who we had the responsibility to bring up.
3. Education is the responsibility of both parents and teachers in the early years of our lives.
As I often do, I went back to the root of the word and found out that well before it started to refer to schooling, the Romans used the term ‘educare’ to describe the raising of children within the family.
Although teaching was a part of it, ‘educare’ primarily alluded to feeding and caring.
Far too often now do we see the education of a child farmed out to teachers, with parents abdicating their roles of primary educators.
I remember this phrase in French when someone has no manners, they say ‘Ils n’ont pas d’education’ (they have no education). Manners are taught at home first, like the basic ‘please’, ‘thank you’ and worryingly more and more absent in our everyday life (as everyone buries themselves in their phones), a ‘hello’ or ‘good morning’ when your path crosses someone else’s.
These are the very basic soft skills that need expanding into more nuanced interactions as we grow up.
4. Education shouldn’t stop once we finish our studies, ideally all of us ought to have access to some forms of mentoring or coaching, to keep on learning and growing.
In an era when artificial intelligence seeps through every aspect of our lives, we need to counterbalance it with critical thinking, philosophy, ethics, the arts, emotional and spiritual intelligence.
Failing that, we will just repeat history, albeit in different circumstances.
Think of the script of a theatre play, played over and over again but with different sets and costumes.
Well that’s it for now, I wholeheartedly thank you for having kept up with me until the end of this little essay.
If you’d like to carry on putting the world to right with a cuppa, just get in touch and let’s find some time together 🙂
And if you or someone in your family, or in your team is in need of strengthening their core (not at the gym), remember that I am here to help, with the discovery and practice of one’s natural talents.
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