By Ezekiel Nabieu
It would appear that some of our unavoidable problems arise from the skewed mindsets of our so-called intellectuals. Every so often are hears discordantly about doctors and lawyers as the only role models in our society. The impression that is being created here by these narrow-minded people is that all other professions are either ignorable or worthless. Those who propagate such ideas have only one idea and that idea is wrong. There were times in colonial days when other professions were not yet “Africanized”. If they were moving with the times they would have known that those two professions had long since been superseded by professions in politics (if they can be so labelled).
To disabuse the minds of such intellectual idiots we would do well to take a look at some other professions that could be mentioned as quintessential in the wholesome building of a nation. It would seem to be infra dig for our doctor/lawyer admirers to mention anything about farming being one of the great professions in the developed world from which the doctor and the lawyer get their daily bread out of the farmers’ wheat.
A statement by Jonathan Swift in his Gulliver’s Travels put paid to even the importance of politicians as being at the top of society. He writes: “Whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before would deserve better of mankind and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together”. Need I say more on one of the oldest professions of mankind? Mechanized or not our freedom from starvation depends on farm produce. And Thomas Jefferson describes agriculture as the first and most precious of all the arts. Are farming and agriculture worth mentioning by the doctor-lawyer fanatics?
The very profession that made the professional segregationists what they are is ignored by them. What nobler employment or more valuable to the state than that of the man who instructs the rising generation? A teacher affects eternity because he can never tell where his/her influence stops.
If we do not train engineers and airline pilots how would we move easily from place to place? We have civil engineers to take care of our roads and bridge constrictions, electrical engineers and mechanical engineers whose professions need as much intelligence as doctors and lawyers. They are in the same class as commercial airline pilots. This is just a sampling of the professions that need high degrees of intelligence and are as prestigious as medicine and law.
And talking about medicine it has been known that natural forces within us are the true healers of disease. Suffice it to say that all medicines are made out of animal and plant substances. It is also true to say that nearly all people die of their medicines and not of their diseases. So why all the hullabaloo about doctors?
Aside from that medicine is the only profession that labors incessantly to destroy the reason for its existence. They cure and cure until there will be no one left to cure.
The profession of a lawyer is becoming less and less honorable. They can file more than one case in two different courts in which the hearing is called up at the same time causing unnecessary adjournments. Sometimes with exasperation the cases are thrown out by the magistrates. How sad for a so-called lofty profession! According to the Bible lawyers are a cursed lot. “But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of him” Luke 7:30. These are they with all their bluff and learned skills. Still quoting the Bible: And he said “woe to you lawyers also! For you load men with burdens hard to bear, and yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers. Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed.” Luke 11:46-47, what an indictment from the Lord Jesus Christ himself on a profession! The utopians have no lawyers among them for they consider them as a people whose function it is to disguise matters.
I am not on a tirade against doctors of medicine and lawyers as it were. Much as they are necessary to our society they are not the be-all and end-all. There are other professions that are equally important. In fact let us not despise any profession. The Bible says “the labourer is worthy of his life”. The mail carrier and the medical doctor are all in the business of delivery; one for merits and the other for pregnant women.
Owing to this myopic idea peddled by educationalists in the media many parents and guardians virtually coerce their children to pursue the professions of medicine and law against their natural talent. Special ability is what the word talent means. God has given to every sane human being a talent for the benefit of society. The fact is that it is sometimes God’s hidden agenda which may not be obvious to the talented. As a result many people have either missed their natural talent or have been goaded into wrong professions by our ambitious parents and guardians. Wrong choices result in wrong outputs. To this end Cicero said: “Let a man practice the profession he best knows”. I may put in a rider here that a man can only do so if he has practiced other professions which can be time-consuming.
To illustrate that children should not be compelled to be lawyers and doctors, let me state the instance of a boy at the Sierra Leone Grammar School while I taught mathematics there. He was called Handel whose performance was not only poor in maths but also in other subjects. But he excelled in music and ended up by studying music in Germany. An incumbent Head of State went to University to do law under the same prevailing syndrome but was not able to make the grade. He ended up doing B.A General and later taking up the Insurance profession. Forcing children or children forcing themselves into professions for which they do not have the natural talent ends up in mediocrity and a loss of production to the state.
To recap let me state additionally that there are other professions like writing, religion, computer sciences and biological sciences that produced an iconic figure like Dr Monty Jones who discovered the New Rice for Africa (NERICA) now used worldwide. Let us begin to have regard for talent of all sorts.
(C) Politico 31/10/13
