Employment, not education – 6th year of ascent to practicality and reality

Decent employment is a better solution to
chronic poverty than "higher studies" 

Hello good morning! As I am in my sixth year of practicality and realism on life matters, I prefer decent work opportunities to completing any college or university courses. The education system, from primary to postgraduate levels, should be overhauled from the start. Those too many lessons that have little meaning in life should be replaced with fewer but higher-quality lessons. Instead of starting at 7 AM, primary and secondary schools should start classes at 10 AM and not extend school time beyond 4 PM. Rather than 5 days, the school week should be up to 3 days because most students have outstanding issues outside school. Assignments or homework should be abolished (or outlawed) because that only gives students extra blanks to fulfill and exacerbates health issues, and most students inevitably have outstanding (and distressing) priorities outside school. So-called exams should start at secondary school because young people cannot yet form accurate or comprehensive judgments. On tertiary education, the government should strongly prioritize technical, vocational, and livelihood education and listen to the dynamic demands of the workforce. What people really need is decent opportunities to find work or start a business, not that dishonest advertisement called a diploma.

Rather than only the traditional intelligence quotient (IQ), the education system should also pay attention to emotional quotient (EQ), social quotient (SQ), and adversity quotient (AQ). EQ determines the subject's resistance to improper outbursts of emotions. SQ determines the subject's quality of friendships and the ability to form and maintain friendships. AQ determines the subject's handling of undesirable events, be they earthquakes or bankruptcy. People with average IQ but higher EQ and SQ are very successful. A low AQ translates to the tendency to abandon one's own children or lose faith in being alive. The mainstream of the world's workforce demands a balance of these four intelligence parameters. In a layperson's terms, success in any work environment favors the street-smart.

P.S. Education doesn't always return good results.

Personal life: hikikomori in the making

In my personal life, the pressure to find a job or stay a hikikomori for life increases. However, circumstances surrounding me suggest the latter. But I must remind you that my decision to cancel school in March 2020 is final. I can explain my early ascent—

1. Failed or incomplete grades. First and foremost, I had failing grades across multiple subjects. In fact, I even had "incomplete" grades at college. As I could not afford to comply with academic requirements due to outstanding issues outside school, I had no choice but to accept my academic failures as permanent events.
2. Outcast at school. However, a stronger factor behind my March 2020 ascent is that I was an outcast in senior high school and college. Significant parts of my so-called "classmates" viewed me as a nuisance at best, a creature of calamity at worst. This was because my interests offended their expectations. Not to mention that the bullying system is rampant in the schooling culture.
3. Lack of friendship lessons. The education system failed me in the way that it never taught me social skills. It never taught me how to make friends and maintain friendships. This largely explains why I am a loner and an outcast. People who have a higher-quality social life are the most successful in the business world. Success favors people with significant social skills. Loners such as me are bound to fail.
4. Lack of opportunities. I live in an environment that lacks decent jobs. Moreover, the programs in higher education only lead to jobs that are found only in global cities. There is no point in pursuing higher studies when the jobs in your surrounding environment have low pay.

My decision to ascend in March 2020 is the right idea, if not the best idea. Across the world, events in the employment and labor sectors increasingly imply that higher education does not give a chance to succeed. In China, students are starting to throw their diplomas into the waste bin because they learned that higher education did not help them secure employment. Elsewhere, higher education has been denounced as a form of classism.

When a person remains unemployed for a sufficient time, he or she will slowly learn how to live as a hikikomori. The longer the isolation, the more contentment with the hikikomori lifestyle, the more difficult the reintegration to the society outside. When people come to reintegrate the hikikomori, it is generally too late. Programs intended to "resocialize" hikikomori are largely unsuccessful. As I am not in education, training, or employment since March 2020 and there is no possibility of receiving decent job offerings, I am on track to be a hikikomori. I find it easier to imagine growing old with no support system, along with completing my life in isolation. As for my future as hikikomori, I will revert to my uneducated state, which is how I may behave in life as if never having been formally educated.