Editor, ‎
In her article, "Creativity and Necessity: Not All Children Want to be Doctors and ‎Engineers,"(The Tripoli Post issue 199), Zainab Al-Arabi has pointed to a serious ‎issue which is quite common in the developing world the reasons invariably are as ‎noted below.

‎1.There is a lack of career guidance facilities and consequently child's particular ‎inclination and passion for any particular field does not get discovered.

‎2. Even if child's interest is spotted, he or she is unable to pursue it because of lack of ‎teaching and training facilities in the particular field.

‎3. Normally, parents/elders decide what the child will study and they want their ‎children to be doctors, engineers, etc because these positions carry more ‎respectability and acceptability in the society.

hardworking students of average intelligene will qualify any course that they are ‎enroled into and will perform satisfactorily in their jobs. However, their performance ‎will be nowhere near that of persons who came in the profession because of their ‎particular inclination.

Libya has a relatively small population and plentiful resources. I am sure it would not ‎be too difficult to provide career guidance and a wide spectrum of teaching and ‎training facilities, especially in science, art and crafts as suggested by Zainab so that ‎all children could exploit their full potential and excel in their field, which will be ‎good for them and good for the country.

There is also a need to persuade the parents and elders to let the children choose their ‎profession and not to regard certain professions and vocations as 'below the required ‎level of respectability'.‎

‎ SRH HASHMI‎
‎ riazhashmee[at]hotmail[dot]com