I am fond of Bollywood; India’s version of tinseltown. The industry has proved its filmmaking finesse by reaping various international awards. What makes it more promising is their ability to produce these world-class films with very meager budgets. This proves again that hard work, skills and drive always bring the rainbow and the pot of gold after the rain. Probably one of the most admired Bollywood movies is “The Three Idiots”. The movie features three engineering students who found friendship amidst hardship in college. This film brought out countless nuggets of wisdom and satire that tell and depict social and life issues. Anyone could pick up valuable lessons from quotable lines in the movie and make use of them in reality. My favorite line from the film is, “make your passion your profession”. I love this simple line because I believe this may solve a pressing problem today. Every year we yield a thousand graduates. Some find decent, good and high-paying jobs, but most add up to our soaring unemployment statistics. Today, an upsetting three million grads fell into the void of joblessness. This is very alarming and should not be taken for granted especially in a nation where labor is boasted in other countries and education is perceived as the best possible answer to poverty. The problem with unemployment is not new, but the ultimate solution to address it has been painfully elusive. The survey results of unemployment figures are inversely proportional to what our economy is achieving. Being touted as the ‘rising tiger’ beefs up expectations of social improvement. Yet, a lot of people still find themselves jobless or underemployed. The government is doing something. But if a chief part of the problem had not been resolved by our solutions, then we may have to go back to them and reanalyze the cause. There has been an aggressive growth of the economy, therefore, job opportunities should have grown aggressively too. This is what the government is focusing on. The tourism campaign has never been more vibrant and inviting. More international moguls are charmed to come and invest in our people. They are all evident which means we already have the jobs. The question is are we hiring the right people? Are we training the people most suitable for the specific kind of work? Have we harvested the people whose skills, likes and passion are in parallel to their educational profile? Not totally. The real problem is not the availability of work but the workforce itself. We have not harnessed the full potential of the people because we have not provided enough avenues for them to discover their respective intelligences. For example, a student is tempted to take a particular course because the media says it’s ‘in demand’ both locally and internationally, but at the end of the day, the demand cannot accommodate all the graduates. The urge to land an immediate job after graduation is pushing students to resort to this kind of thinking even if by heart, they belong to a different field. Eventually, we reap what we sow. A worker is never satisfied of his job and frequently quits. A graduate is uninterested to hunt for jobs matching his or her educational background. A bloated number of graduates of a specific course have difficulties finding that instant job they were hoping for because of their bloated population as well. The implementation of K-12 is one of the most important advancements of our educational system because the extra time gives students the chance to realize, appreciate and develop their innate skills and capabilities. However, we still need to sustain the fire by offering more comprehensive tests to categorize a student. Objective examinations should serve as reinforcements to allow us to mentally decipher a student’s character and mental being. This is also where the sophistication and nobility of the teaching profession comes in. As teachers, they are bound to guide and enlighten their children and not to drill fear, misconceptions and inequity. On a larger scale, we should improve our educational budgeting. The lion’s share of our funds should be earmarked to the system. Other Asian countries are already on this path and they are patently going the right way. Better education is the best way to solve unemployment. By doing this, we may be able to save money, time, resources, effort and plausibly, lives. It is funny to think that a simple film like The Three Idiots suggests so much satire. It radiates so many messages that discredit social follies and help watchers realize and solve social crises. All the things and entities in it can be very much likened to what is happening now in the Philippines. And I must say, that we as a country can never fully quip the famous line of protagonist Rancho, because without any shadow of doubt, in terms of sociopolitical and socioeconomic issues like unemployment, we are far from ‘All is well’.
