Education, Benefits And Prawn Village

Last Sunday, I was invited to a small fishing village to give a talk...

In conjunction with our local university students, who organized the education fair to create more awareness in a small peaceful village called Prawn Village in our local language.

You see, this village livelihood mainly depends on either fishing, or rearing fish. At least 70% of their income are from the sea.

Their children will help out in their work, after school. And usually, when they're into the secondary level, their motivation to study will drop very significant.

Most of them will drop off after O-Levels...

Thus, the exhibition, and the talk...

Been a firm believer in life-long learning and education, this is quite a challenge for me.

For example, how would you make them see, that education will help their livelihood. How will education benefit them?

I went to the hall early, and mingled with the organizing students, and a few parents there.

I asked around, and check the courses offered by the various university.

You'll probably have the same idea...

Of course, giving a talk about education, I cannot leave out Confucius' teachings on education, by quoting a few of His sayings, to give them that education has been seen as important since long, long time ago...

And quickly I bring them to see the benefit of education to their profession and the development of their villages.

There're marine science courses...

There're bio-technology courses...

There're aqua-culturu courses...

There're genetic technology courses...

All these, I link directly to their livelihood - what the FISH!

I shared with them:

You can rear bigger fishes, in lesser time. You can use technology to help them identify fish pools. You can develop more sickness-resistance fishes.

Then, I move on to other courses...

You'll need marketing expertise to market your fishes, if you rear more with those technologies...

You'll need accounting and finance professional to keep and analyze your records on fish sales...

You'll need management skills to take over your fishy business... (family business mindset are strong here)

You'll need computer technology to improve your systems...

You'll need social science to work on rural development and enhance Prawn Village...

Aha! Now they see it!

Well, the trick is - to always relate something back to their interest, their livelihood... in this case, education!

And they were so participative in my 45-minutes short presentation. They loved my talk. I can see it from their eyes, their nods (not dozing off, of course!), their smile...

(Well, the organizers told me later... the previous talks they organized were slapped with poor response!)

Of course, I did 2 activities with them - one to break the ices and get them to have fun before I began the serious talk, and another one to illustrate the point about education.

After the talk, one of the owners of a local fish rearing facility, walked up to me, shaked my hands, and said gratefully, "Thank you for your talk! Thank you for insights!"

"You see, I dropped off after O-Levels 29 years ago to help my father in his business. I never had any chances to further my studies."

"All these years, I know that I could have done more to improve my technics, and business. But, my knowledge is very, very limited! How I wish I have the opportunity to further my studies, to have more knowledge than I am now!"

"Experience counts, but this is how much I can have. So, with your enlightening talk tonight, I'm so impressed as it reflects what my heart have been yearning for..."

"And I will, I promise, that I'll let my grandchildren, 9 of them, to go for higher education, and have more knowledge and bring it back to develop our little village!"

"Thank you so much!"

My oh my! I was speechless!

The organizers, they too, loved it...



And guess what - the talk was totally different from what I've prepared in that afternoon... except with the few same lines I took of from Confucius Analects...

And oh, I was thinking to record the talk and share it with you... but it's in Chinese. So, perhaps, if the time allows, I'll try to transcript it in English and post it up here.

Till then, Confucius' idea on education lies in applying what you've learn - in this case, to the benefits of Prawn Village's rice bowls... as Confucius said, "Isn’t it joyful to learn and apply what you have learned consistently?..." [Chapter 1, Paragraph 1]

Till then, have a great weekend! :)

cheers,
Guan
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