Many young people just can't wait to leave school and that is hardly surprising. Most kids will have spent 10-12 years studying along with having to do homework in the evenings and on the weekends and all with very few tangible rewards and very little or no money.
The more forward thinking children will understand, along with those who left school early some time ago, that education is an investment and, like all investments, the earlier you make them, the more they are worth.
If you study hard in your formative years, it will be that much easier to learn other things later on in life either at university, in technical college or at work itself.
Even if your family has a business for you to drop right into, you should not skimp on your education, because even the best family businesses can fail.
It is always a good idea to have a Plan B to fall back on and even if the business does not go under, you will be more useful to it with higher qualifications.
This was where Lek went wrong in the new book "Behind The Smile ~ the story of Lek, a bar girl in Pattaya" by Owen Jones. Her father was a farmer with his own rice fields, but when he died unexpectedly, the family discovered that he had left massive debts which could cost them the farm.
Lek had left school early precisely because her family had its own farm and she could not see any point in getting a better education if living in a village and working in the fields. This lack of foresight came back to haunt her, when she had to go to the big city to work to save the farm.
The opportunities open to her were very limited, because of her lack of education. When the final straw came, Lek drifted into the tourist sex industry in order to earn more money.
Lek spent 10 years working in a bar which catered to the tourist sex industry and wanted to leave every day, before her daughter found out what she was doing for a living.
"Behind The Smile" tells Lek's story from her point of view, detailing some of her hopes, dreams and fears. It also tells of some of her exploits and modus operandi and those of her colleagues in the bar called 'Daddy's Hobby', where she worked.
The crying shame about Lek's predicament was that it had been avoidable. She was a bright girl, not brilliant, but clever enough, but her lack of foresight and lack of good careers advice had let her down. Both she and her parents could only see village life and working on their farm as a possible future.
They had no ambition to improve their lot except by becoming owners of more and more land, because there was no viable alternative future in the village. However, when disaster struck, they had nothing to fall back on, which cost Lek ten years at a job she didn't like and also deprived her of the company of her family and daughter.
