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Education, Deconstruction and Inspiration.

Knowledge is power. At least, it reduces the chances of people getting manipulated by systemic machinations.

By Dr Joel YongPublished 3 years ago Updated 3 years ago 6 min read
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Education, Deconstruction and Inspiration.
Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

As most educators have already understood, teaching is a pretty demanding job. You may get students who don’t perform up to their performance ceilings; you may get disruptive students who don’t like to pay attention in class; and you’re swamped with a ton of administrative work such as lesson planning and setting various assessments for them.

It’s therefore an easy thing for the more experienced educators to become jaded and simply go through the motions. Read off the slides. Reuse the same exam questions. Talk as if nobody’s there.

And that does affect student learning.

But getting notes like these from my own students does bring a smile to my face:

Photo from author's personal stash.

Why do I do what I'm doing, though?

Whether I’m conducting classes in my day job as an educator or my night hustle writing articles on my Substack newsletter, the thing that drives me is the WHY. Why am I doing what I’m doing?

If I were to say I’m in it mainly for the money, I’d get jaded pretty quickly.

Because employee income is always finite and never as big as the sums of money that their hiring organisation deals with collectively.

But getting recognition from my students acts as a checkpoint that my "why" motivation still remains.

Ultimately, my why stems from the desire to deconstruct. To use analogies to turn complex-looking situations into something that is more understandable.

Because it would otherwise be so much easier for unassuming people to get manipulated by systemic manipulations.

An educator by day…

We live in an age where employees are deemed as “easily replaceable”. While our parents were working, the common mantra among them was to remain loyal to a single employer, and it wasn’t uncommon to see people starting work at and retiring at the same company after 30 years of working there in various capacities.

But for our generation and the generation to come?

It’s not that clear cut. People are easily hired and fired these days. What if one were hired by Amazon because you were earmarked for being fired in the future? What if one’s wages were sub-standard and one could get better money elsewhere?

But a corporate system requires employees to function. Skilled employees are necessary to fit into the system as essential cogs that get replaced over time once they have worn out their welcome.

Artificial intelligence (AI), of course, is expected to replace more and more jobs within an organisation as it gets fine-tuned further. However, before that happens, the system still needs employees to fill in the roles that AI cannot replace as of yet.

Hence, the education system will still condition students and groom them to become obedient employees for the future. In some cases or disciplines, to become overworked, spent, exhausted and fired for the next batch of fresh blood to come in.

Such as the high turnover rates that we see in public accounting, for instance.

Academically, though, the education system does not teach that. Students would get easily disillusioned about being mechanistic cogs in a money-making system, because we're human after all.

It doesn’t help students to become more understanding of the corporate system out there — because how many students would want to become obedient employees if they ever do find out that they’re being manipulated to fit into the corporate system as obedient employees?

And as long as the students don’t see that, unofficial conversations with them about job prospects and work in future will come dosed with these questions to help them understand the reality about working life, which academic institutions aren’t required discuss much at all — their focus is on ensuring that the academic content gets delivered and the students are able to clear the module.

After all, academic institutions are just there to provide an academic education, no?

And an educator by night…

When I’m writing, I focus on a different area of manipulation.

In this case, we’d be looking at the manipulations exerted by the healthcare industries on the common people.

When a patient with a chronic illness (such as high cholesterol) goes for their regular medical checkup, the healthcare professional inevitably prescribes a dose of statin medication. Approximately 35 million Americans are on a form of statin medication, with many more around the world also on statins.

Pfizer’s “legendary cash cow” statin drug, Lipitor, managed to gross more than US$130 billion in sales throughout the course of its patent lifespan.

It’s remarkably lucrative.

Even though statins are known just to block the synthesis of mevalonate (an important intermediate in the synthesis of fresh cholesterol). It’s not going to influence macrophage activity — which is the deciding factor in influencing atherosclerotic plaque rupture.

Unfortunately, the pharmaceutical industry goes along with the popular style of Key Opinion Leader (KOL) marketing. When the qualified health professional is enforcing the use of statins, what would a heart disease patient who doesn’t understand biochemistry any better do? When they then start marketing a patented partial solution that doesn’t deal with the root cause of the issue, it’s pretty darned lucrative indeed.

The patients take the statin prescription.

And because the statin doesn’t completely solve the problem, the patient would become a recurring subscriber to the drug, albeit unwillingly. How many more times will the patient be consuming the drug?

If the drug is going to cost top dollar because of its patent monopoly, how lucrative would it be to the pharmaceutical manufacturer if the KOL (doctor) was to continue enforcing drug consumption for them?

It’s manipulation again, isn’t it?

Which is why another group of students came up to me and told me that they were going to finesse their parents (indirectly) by working in the pharmaceutical industry.

Because almost every other Tom, Dick and Harry is going to suffer from some form of health issues related to Type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol or hypertension in due time. The medications that are prescribed by the doctor won’t provide a lasting change to the patient’s health condition — the patient also has to make a deliberate choice to change up their lifestyle for the better.

Though I did tell them….

Well, the pharmaceutical industry will finesse your parents financially. But you ain’t gonna see as much financial gain as they will!

However, because there will always be that (unwilling) demand for drugs, pharmaceutical manufacturing will remain a hot industry for years to come, and employment will be plentiful in that sector.

As is the processed food industry. Because stressed people do need their comfort food, no? But once they do become recurring subscribers to their preferred comfort foods, it’s almost inevitable that the processed food industry will hand them off to the pharmaceutical industry…

Inevitably, the financial health of the individual gets hit hard by a combination of those 2 industries.

But these will be lucrative industries in the years to come.

At the expense of the consumer, that is!

And as long as these systemic machinations abound, my work remains cut out for me, whether I get paid sufficiently well for it or not.

Being able to deconstruct all these complexities and derive new conclusions out of it is satisfying enough for me. Helping my readers or my students learn something new — just seeing that light bulb appear in their heads, is sufficient for me to continue doing what I’m doing.

Joel Yong, Ph.D., is a biochemical engineer/scientist, an educator and a writer. He has authored 5 ebooks (available on Amazon.com in Kindle format) and co-authored 6 journal articles in internationally peer-reviewed scientific journals. His main focus is on finding out the fundamentals of biochemical mechanisms in the body that the doctors don’t educate the lay people about, and will then proceed to deconstruct them for your understanding — as an educator should.

Do feel free to subscribe to my mailing list for more exclusive content!

This article was originally published in Medium.

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About the Creator

Dr Joel Yong

Engineering biochemical support strategies for optimal health. Subscribe to my mailing list to not miss out on the latest content!

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