Funny old world we're living in currently. You need a diploma for everything. Want to work in a call centre? No degree in languages? Sorry, no room. Got a talent for making clothes but no piece of paper to prove it? Better do it as a hobby. Good at art? Don't bother if you've not been tutored by Rembrandt's grandson's wife's daughter-in-law from her second marriage. Road sweeper? Not if you haven't been to community college. When you look through the jobseekers' websites these days it's really depressing. People can't do anything without the right papers.
It makes you wonder - my father left school at a very young age and went to work in the print business: Daily Express, of all places, where he was typesetter. That means he put together the pages of the newspaper using his hands, picking out the letters from the selection of metallic blocks in the Gutenberg days before computers put an end to it all. He designed the front page too. He couldn't do it these days - you need to go to journalist school and learn all the software they use. Fair enough, but it's not rocket science. I know sixteen-year-olds who could pick up the skill in an afternoon. But no - you need to PROVE you can by coming out with at least four years at university.
If Ernest Solvay, the father of Belgium, born in 1838, had been around in this age, he would never have got out of the factory floor. Despite not finishing university due to illness, he developed the ammonia-soda process (later the Solvay Process) for the manufacture of soda ash. That's sodium carbonate in solid form to you and me. He worked in his father's chemical factory until 21, and four years later opened his own factory in the Walloon industrial belt, second only to England's regions of mass production. He went on to open up plants in the UK, the US, Germany, Austria, and at this moment in time there are 80 plants worldwide. The Solvay business is even now listed on Euronext in Brussels.
He became rich through patenting his products, which, very reminiscent of Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, he used for philanthropic purposes. One of his pet projects was the establishment of the "Institut des Sciences Sociales" (ISS) in 1894. He also set up the International Institutes for Physics and Chemistry. In 1903, he founded the Solvay Business School, now a part of the Free University of Brussels (VUB or ULB). Eight years later, he started several high-ranking conferences which bore his name. Marie Curie, Max Planck, New Zealand's Ernest Rutherford and even a young Albert Einstein attended. He was elected to the Belgian Senate twice, and was in the cabinet in his later years.
Can you imagine that happening today? Except for the kids of the élite, that is never going to happen any more in the Europe being created for us today. If you're good enough, if you have a talent, if you're someone with a dream but don't need to be re-educated, why bother? Cut out the middle bit and get on with it now. For example, the British Council in Brussels does not hire staff to train professionals in the English language without the CELTA qualification or equivalent. I and many of my colleagues have degrees in language, as much as 20 years' experience, and work within the highest authority in the European Union, but that is not enough. To work for them we need that piece of scrap paper with the right words on it to prove we paid a thousand euro for their course. THEN we'll be let in.
But to be frank, many of the very best language trainers don't even have degrees; they are good enough because their enthusiasm and down-to-earth ways carry them much further to satisfying their clients or students than most CELTA-qualified people, because those with the papers are a lot more complacent - they think they've got it, because they're "qualified". I don't see the British Council ever winning the right to give courses in the European Institutions, with thousands of students in the classes per year, if they persist with their Old English Gentlemen's Club mentality. And long may it stay that way. We don't need snobs in the New Europe.
We still need, though, to tackle those who persist in the need for qualifications to do certain jobs where diplomas are unnecessary. Over half of all Belgians are doing jobs below their level of education. Many admin workers are frustrated because they worked their socks off to end up making photocopies for their boss. Job ads for simple positions ask for so much in someone's capabilities and job experience that I wonder if they actually find someone. Or if the job is real; not a phantom advertisement to make competitors curious, or jealous.
Let us go back to Ernest Solvay, who despite his ideas of French linguistic supremacy and class separation, also was the first to offer his employees work contracts to include time off and an early form of social welfare, unheard of at the time. He single-handedly saved Belgium from disintegration after the First World War. We are losing out on people of his magnitude through blindly pursuing the policy of suffocation of the undiploma'd. And by keeping SME employment taxes high, but that's another matter.
The Solvay Process:
1. CaCO3 -> CaO + CO2 The calcium is heated to get CO2
2. 2NaCl + 2CO2 +2NH3 +2H2O -> 2NaHCO3 + 2NH4Cl
3. 2NaHCO3 -> Na2CO3 + H2O + CO2
The ammonium can be recuperated by doing the following:
2NH4Cl + CaO -> 2NH3 + CaCl2 + H2O
This process uses almost no ammonium, and the leftover is CaCl2, Calcium Chloride.
But unfortunately, we can't accept this as fact any more because Mr Solvay didn't have the correct qualifications.
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