Are Canadians Over-Educated?

I ask that question with a slight smile on my face. What I'm really wondering is if the whole employment "system" in Canada diminishes the value of entrepreneurship and overplays the necessity of certification.

A friend of mine back home got me thinking about all of this. She's in her mid 30's, is a single mom with a few young children. She's worked at many jobs in her life and is now considering becoming a teacher. I think she'd be an amazing one. She's bright, quick, patient, loves children, and has tons of life experience. But in order for her to become a traditional teacher she'd have to go through an entire year of the Education program at UBC or SFU (in the Vancouver area). Who even knows what her chances of getting accepted in the program would be.

Is there really that much to learn that she'd couldn't pick it up another way, perhaps as part of an apprentice program at a local school? Furthermore, does a technical or university degree guarantee that the recipient is fully qualified for the job at hand? I think not. In the case of teaching, we've all had to suffer through horrendous teachers who were horrible human beings but were able to pass the tests required to get their degree. Just because someone has high marks in school doesn't guarantee anything more than they know how to pass tests; and often that's only an indication that they have a good memory. This fact is what I call the "Great Lie of the Education System".

Let me be clear: Some jobs definitely require official certification. This would include professions where public safety is directly affected, such as:

• Doctors
• Nurses
• Pharmacists
• Police officers
• [Some] Engineers
• Airline pilots
  

But for most jobs, once a person turns 30, is all of this certification really necessary? Or is it more related to various professional groups protecting their own turf?

Following today's conventional wisdom, Albert Einstein would have never been listened to because he didn't have a Ph.D. in Physics when he came up with his Theory of Relativity.