I was just having a conversation with my colleague 7ala about educated people and sophisticated ones and how there is a huge difference between both. In a country like Jordan; education has become a necessity like food and medicine; it seems that everyone gets to pursue higher education especially with all these private universities out there.

If we go back 40 or 50 years in time and see how Jordan or the whole Arab World was for that matter; we will find that only a minority of population got the opportunity to pursue higher education; this minority was usually from the rich class because they could afford to send their children abroad at a time we did not have universities here.

University of Jordan was founded in 1962 and starting that time, other sectors of the society had a chance to study without traveling, and education was no longer restricted to the financially fortunate individuals. By then; even middle class families could manage to send their sons and daughters to university to give them a chance at a better and brighter future than them.

I think it was initiated then that almost all people wanted to children to become doctors or engineers because those were in high demand at the time, they would graduate and find jobs waiting for them and they would make good money that will help them and their families to survive.

That generation got the most benefit out of education because they were a rare currency at that time and they did not need to struggle to find a job. The country was still less congested, they were needed and the value of our currency was much higher than now which facilitated financial growth for this group.

With time; more schools and universities were established, education was made obligatory for both genders, public schools made it possible for lower classes of the society to send their children to school. With passing years; the population increased significantly and at the same time the value of the currency was reduced.

In the last 20 years of this country's life, we have witnessed changes take place and we have proved that we are capable to adapt no matter what the circumstances were. Jordan was exposed to critical circumstances without having any infrastructure to adapt, yet the whole country and its people proved one more time that Jordanians are survivors.

One of these changes was that most of the people are educated with at least the first university degree, and just like any rule in this world; more supply means less demand and this is exactly what happened to our generation; we came at a time where there is no significant need or demand for our certificates; we now resemble those who had no education so 30 or 40 years ago.

What could be the solution? Stop people from pursuing higher education and move more towards technical professions?

Isn't it a valid point that the education fees are getting higher to push those who cannot afford it to learn something handy? Maybe it is a message to all those middle and lower class or even poor people to take their children out of schools and pushing them towards workshops and technical training centers to learn a profession that sends the individual earlier into the workforce.

To tell you the truth; I really don’t find anything wrong with this approach; if a person is not into physics, math and chemistry, why not learn something he would benefit from and give back to his family and the society as a whole. Instead of wasting the years on learning things he/she will never like or comprehend; isn't it easier if they shift towards practical education and save themselves and their folks time and money?

Yes, everyone has the right to get education, I am not defying that, but what if this education will be all wasted if this particular someone was not good at it or did not find anything to do with it when he/she graduates?

Yesterday; I read a post by the caller; she was talking about all these young people dreaming of leaving their countries to a place that would provide them with a better opportunity to work and make money, but couldn't it have been easier for some of these people to learn something that would give them the same if not a better opportunity in their own countries?

How do we manage to land good jobs in a place where everyone is educated? How can someone accept to be paid pennies after he/she worked so hard and studied harder for over 16-20 years? What is the solution?

The way I see it, it is no longer special or extraordinary to have a university degree; 30 years ago; a university graduate was someone people looked up to and youngsters saw as a role model. These days; we are like everyone else, we are all educated.

What sets the records straight is how sophisticated people are. The problem with us is that we don’t read and no, newspapers are not considered reading material!

What makes technicians, carpenters, electricians, mechanics, painters … etc. thought less of, is that when they leave school, they ditch reading and they do not develop themselves intellectually; they stop at that point and never grow up. What everyone must realize is that being sophisticated has nothing to do with being educated. Although it is easier for an educated person to grow into becoming sophisticated; it is not impossible for the uneducated to do that as well; all they need is the desire, willpower, determination and persistence and then they will become extraordinary with no doubt.

We all get these annoying chain letters that doom us with bad luck if we don’t keep the letter moving. We get the same email many times because it seems that all our friends remember us with a simple forwarded message.

I really don’t mind much when the message is nice and sometimes brings a smile or a good laugh; however; some of these messages are becoming really annoying and those who initiate them try to make the reader feel a bit guilty if he/she cuts the chain and stops it in its tracks.

For example; I get these letters with nice Islamic messages, but at the end of the message, I find a disguised threat that says: if you are too good to read and pass this message, maybe you are not worthy of the rewards that you will gain if you do! How did these people live before the email era? What did they use to forward chain letters? Regular mail, registered mail or courier services?

Sometimes these messages are nothing more than a hoax email that spreads like fire in hay, and usually these kinds of messages are about famous characters or companies or just plain urban legends that hold no objective whatsoever; you scroll down the piles and piles of email addresses that are included from previous forward processes, and when you finally reach the end of the letter, it is a small message that dooms your with bad fortune and loss of all your life luck if you stop this letter from reaching the world.

It always amazed me how some people find the time and energy to create and start such chain letters; where do they get the material from? I am not talking about those who forward, I am talking about those who create and initiate.

The web is a wide source that can give information and images about almost anything, and with the new emerging technologies; you can find clips and send it to your friends list and so on.

We have seen groups created on MSN, Yahoo and others, and we have been sent many letters that were originally created by group administrators with an invitation to join at the end of the letter. I have to admit that some of these messages have good content but some others are just a pure waste of time.

When blogging picked up in our part of the world, we have seen fellow bloggers fall in the trap of "copy and paste"; they used to copy the content of these email letters and paste it in a post on their blogs. We have talked a lot about such bloggers and advised others that for your blog to be genuine; you have to stay away from the "copy and paste" trap.

What is happening now is the complete opposite; the chain letters creators have found a rich material in blogs; and I am receiving chain letters with content I have already seen and know that one of my fellow bloggers has actually written that.

Last night, as I was checking my email; I got an email that has images I have seen on Sabbah's blog. Another email contains the poem that Mysterious Eve wrote for the child Ahmad who died in the Israeli aggression last week, and as if that is not enough; I get the same poem but translated to English. Another time; I got an email with many pictures taken from Talasim and they still hold the logo.

Where is the respect for people who come up with these posts? Why don’t people respect copyrights and get permission from authors before they steal their material? This is stealing and I don’t think that it can be called something else.

Maybe it is time for those emailers to step aside and have mercy on our inboxes that become full because of these forwarded letters that have content we have already seen on blogs and by their own original authors; will you please stop the redundancy and give us a break?