Get yourself a proper job

Immigrant families often have very rigid ideas about what constitutes a respectable career path for their sons and daughters

"How much do you get paid?" This is the first question I am asked by many of the A-level students I meet as part of a Muslim mentoring programme for schools in underprivileged areas of North London.

Although they ask with a cheeky smirk, in the eyes of many of the students a satisfactory answer would cement my credibility as a mentor. Most are of Somali, Pakistani and Bengali origin, and the mentoring scheme kicks off in their first year of A-level study with the purpose of helping to motivate the students academically by providing successful examples of the fruits of a good education. If they make enough money, that is.

Upon closer acquaintance, it appears that most of the students need very little academic motivation. They are second-generation immigrants whose families encourage them to perform and go to university in order to secure a good job and a healthy livelihood. If anything, they need motivation to take up more extra-curricular activities and be more involved with pursuits that would allow them to explore their talents and personal aptitudes. Every single one of the students in the programme was planning to enrol in either a science or maths-based discipline (except one girl, who wanted to study English and asked sheepishly whether an English degree would help her secure a lucrative role in today's job market).

This favouring of "proper jobs" and the academic application that facilitates them is not unknown in Arab and Asian communities. Indeed, where I went to high school and university in Egypt and Sudan, academic streams were clearly divided into "science" and "art", (the latter encompassing everything from humanities to social sciences to "soft" sciences such as geology) and never the twain did meet. Under considerable social and familial pressure, most of the gifted students opted for medicine, engineering, business studies and their offshoots, while the rest reluctantly enrolled in what were perceived as less prestigious subjects like politics and languages.

Inevitably, this separation has a materialistic goal. The students from North London see a stable job with a title as their ticket out of poverty and into affluence (and I am hardly one to speak, having resisted pressure from my family to study medicine in favour of politics – only to end up in finance). This in turn increases their eligibility for marriage and enhances their position as a respectable member of the community.

More importantly however, there is also a certain suspicion that befalls an intelligent person who takes up literature, say, rather than medicine. The more artistic pursuits are viewed as disreputable irrespective of how lucrative they are, almost harking back to a time when artists, poets and musicians were jesters and eunuchs in the court of those with real purpose, the decision-makers who showered coins on the heads of their foppish entertainers in payment for distraction from the real business of living.

Dedicating oneself entirely to what are perceived to be Bohemian self-indulgent pursuits smacks of a lack of discipline, of application, of perhaps perturbingly unique thought that breeds moral suspicion.

Men who shun more mainstream roles are viewed as either effete or unreliable for lacking the mettle to pursue these roles. Although female students opting for less mainstream academia and careers do not meet as much resistance (for the much of the prestige of certain jobs is tied to male machismo), the perceived moral dubiousness of more ostensibly licentious courses is in evidence. At an Islam Expo session, Maleiha Malik called upon Muslim families to allow and encourage their daughters to take up sports, drama and music instead of shoehorning them into more sober careers. The issue in this case goes beyond promoting what is perceived as good career-wise for these students and into the realm of prohibition for no reason other than "it is not done". In this case, even extra-curricular activities are discouraged.

Ironically, pursuits such as writing and poetry are celebrated when dabbled in on the side, when they can be viewed as a manifestation of all-round ability and intellectual dexterity. Members of royal families in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates are accomplished poets and one of the most popular TV programmes in the Middle East is Millions Poet, a Pop Idol themed poetry competition.

In the UK, this Spartan/Athenian split is less in evidence. I tried to explain to the students that they were lucky to be born and live in a society where they could expand their horizons and think more laterally about what academic life they wish to follow without it necessarily impacting their earning potential or compromising the respect they would like to earn. There are disciplines that require strict training such as medicine but many university graduates have successful careers in law and finance after gaining totally unrelated degrees and in the process of doing so expanded their horizons and cultivated themselves into more flexible, balanced and adaptable members of the workforce. These individuals not only contribute more to a role than single minded ones but are free of the technocrat's tunnel vision.

This sadly, did not really resonate with the students of North London and I felt that the ideal of the Renaissance man was very much a luxury here in communities confounded by materialistic realities and deeply ingrained cultural perceptions of success.

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