Degrees of Separation

If you become a prominent politician in the UK, the first thing the press will do is find out if you have a master’s degree in stuff learned from books and point and laugh if you do. If you become a prominent politician in Poland, the first thing the press will do is check if you can spell.

Our current prime minister, David Cameron, went to one of the best schools in the world and obtained a first-class degree from one of the best universities in the world. Most British people think this makes him an idiot, so he never mentions it.

It is almost impossible to explain to Polish people just how different our attitudes are. For example, the recent big story about President Komorowski making orthographic errors could never have happened in the UK. If you went to a news editor in London and said: “Hey, look at this! The prime minister made a spelling mistake,” he would treat you like a lunatic. Nobody cares.

In theory, the Polish way of thinking creates a society in which the best educated and the smartest get the best jobs and the power. This would be very nice, if it didn’t coincidentally create a society in which you have to go to university for 47 years before you can get a job as a waitress.

I am amazed by how long Poles spend at university. By the time some people have finished their education they only have time to work for six months before they have to retire. Do you really need to study Polish poetry for five years before you can run a kiosk or sell shoes?

I think Poles make a fetish out of education. The argument I always hear is: “We have to get masters degrees or we won’t get jobs.” But this misses the point. If employers will give jobs to people with master’s degrees over people with experience or obvious potential, this is because the employers believe education is more important than anything else. And when these graduates get to the stage where they are employing others, they will do exactly the same thing.

In 1980 British rock band Pink Floyd had a massive hit with the song ‘Another brick in the wall.’ As a 10-year-old at the time, the part of the song I liked best was the line “We don’t need no education.” My classmates agreed that this was an excellent sentiment, made all the greater by the fact that it was grammatically incorrect.

We demonstrated out approval by singing this line with the tireless repetition that only children are capable of. We sang it going to school, at school, coming home from school, during holidays when there was no prospect of being anywhere near school – whenever and wherever we could get away with it.

If I was an aspiring rock musician, and 20 years younger, I would right now be composing a song with the chorus “We don’t need no master’s degree.” I could then retire on the proceeds and send my kids to the best universities on the planet.

Jamie Stokes