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TEDx Talks
Published: 2014-05-25
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybYuN8vV2Zs
well thanks a researcher for having me and thanks for coming along today on who said that %HESITATION higher education was about getting a job well actually we for I had a crystal little warm up act for me but %HESITATION I I visited on twenty five or thirty schools every year for the last ten years to talk to their gardens officers their principles and their head teachers
and that's what they think and that's what they tell their students higher education is about that's what parents and children talk about over the dinner table children are thinking about whether to go to university and if so what they're going to do when they get there and what's going to happen after they leave this is a discourse that standard Australian %HESITATION culture open in the last
twenty five years during that period of expansion of higher education so higher education is about getting a job and it's it's a very %HESITATION economic approach to the whole purpose of higher education it's got a macro element we need an educated workforce in a knowledge economy it's got a micro element if you go to university you'll get a better job higher lifetime earnings you don't all
of those things are true of course but there are other ideas about the purposes of higher education and it's been very interesting for me I recently to find a an old idea I'm for our new times in the mouth of genre the minister for education the honorable Christopher pine who gave a speech recently too universities Australia and I used it as an opportunity to talk about
an old idea about higher education that %HESITATION had been articulated in the nineteen fifties by the father of the Australian Liberal Party a Sir Robert Menzies and here's what Christopher Pauline says about Menzies he Menzies understood that the university's role in developing and educated personality had to benefits for the individual who stood to gain not only from the technical skills he or she learned but also
from the formation of an enquiring by implying interprets this idea as follows show with many more Australians could participate in higher education not only would Australia have a highly skilled work force but we would have the makings of a more robust democracy and a civilized society well those are the two ideas that are old and that might be new again the ideas of a robust democracy
and a shiver largest aside that's why you go to university story because then you'll be able to contribute to the makings of a robust democracy and a civilized society and how does that work well there are skills that you need in order to participate in a democratic society you need to turn no six so that when you talk do your neighbors when you go to the
local branch meeting of the political party that you're a member of when you think about who to vote for you understand the issues of the day you need to be able to express those issues and you need to be able to understand what other people are telling you when they express their views on those you need to be able to make complex judgment balance a variety
of competing demands on the public purse on our national resources you need to be able to exercise good judgment and all of those are things that you can get through higher education so that you can leave the halls of academia equipped with the skills to be a part and democratic society not just a spectator and that's the vision that are applying is articulating now this I
it from pints mouth and from Robert Menzies by implication is %HESITATION an idea that he associates with the small see conservative political tradition and it's there it's perfectly appropriate to associate why but it's also somewhere else the social democratic political truth as well and I'm going to talk about some things that happen in my own life growing up in states that show it in that are
arising out of that tradition and it's kind of interesting that some of our most profound ideas actually have multiple sources so it's not just a conservative idea that if you're educated you can participate more effective it's that affect you it's also a social democratic idea so it doesn't matter where you are on the political spectrum whether or not you can extract except and embrace yes %HESITATION
inspiring idea that education has a purpose in relation to democracy and I want to begin with something that happened around the time I was born I in the wake of the second World War and it was %HESITATION of report that god that then president Harry Truman I got a picture of her as Robert it was a report that had a Harry Truman commission are about the
future of higher education America and here's what the conclusions of that report work sure many Australian terms is %HESITATION much more likely %HESITATION %HESITATION the labor party %HESITATION %HESITATION and in Australia political terms here's what it says the open an enquiring mind and the habits of rigorous and disciplined investigation are the marks of free men and the sinews of a free society I just love that
phrase to senior side the purpose of higher education is precisely to promote a robust democracy here's what I say it's a common place of the democratic faith that in education is indispensable to the main entrance growth of freedom of thought faith enterprise and on association thus the social role of education in a democratic society is to enable the citizens to understand praise and re direct forces
man and events as these tend to strengthen or to weaken their liberties the first and most essential charge upon higher education not to get you a job not even to provide you with an internship you don't need one of those court and Chris it shall be the character of democratic values ideals and process cultivate democracies abiding elements it's respect for human personality its insistence on the
fullest freedom of belief and expression for all its citizens its principles that all should participate in decisions that concern themselves faith in reason and it's deep obligations to promote human well being what is a democracy if it's not a society in which all participate and decisions that affect themselves and how can you participate effectively by being knowledgeable by have cultivated and %HESITATION and the cute judgment
and a sense of balance among pitting interests and how can you acquirer hone those skills you can do so through your education one of the things that %HESITATION is crucial to be a democratic citizen is to be able to approach each other as equals to our be able to listen to be able to talk to be able to hear what people are just saying to you
and doctor vice not just a right of participation but a basis for dignity I'm facing you as a fellow creature you are facing me as a fellow creature in nineteen fifty seven and I watched this on television nine teenage students there were a few years older than me but knowing my same age cohort really were brought to little rock state high school in the state of
Arkansas by the hundred and first airborne division of the United States Army and the presence of the hundred and first airborne division was necessary because the governor of Arkansas had previously mobilized the National Guard of the state of Arkansas to prevent the students from entering the little rock high school I'm not making any of this up it happened in my lifetime I watched on television it
happened in the United States of America Dwight Eisenhower had to immobilize the screaming eagle division of the United States Army in order to make it possible for these students I go to high school why because little rock high high school was segregated by race it wasn't a partake system if you were white you could go to little rock high school if you were not you went
to another high school how can people face each other with dignity if they cannot sit in the same classroom together the fact that the high school for African Americans was markedly inferior by every measure sourcing and the quality of the instruction that was on offer is another element of course but simply the separation I students by race man that their ability to face each other as
equals was denied from the start never given a chance to develop what did the little rock nine want to they want a better job all the evidence that we have from their subsequent testimony was that that wasn't the reason that they wanted to go to high school with other children and their community what they wanted was a chance to exercise their human dignity by learning to
talk with each other as equals if we fast forward to nineteen sixty three I was I just about ready to go to university myself idea I was in my final year of high school and %HESITATION idea of when on nine I have a right of passage %HESITATION trip with my oldest friend I'm I'm going to see in a few weeks it's our fiftieth high school reunion
few weeks I haven't seen him since nineteen before our but in nineteen sixty three one on a trip and we visited universities that we thought we might want to attend the following year it's a kind of a a road trip that a lot of American University you do I don't know whether they still do that with you and when you get in a car and you
pack a bag and you'd be away for a week and Cornell as we are here eventually two young and we went to Williams College Dartmouth and Williams College and Amherst College and we got to Amherst it was very weird because we drove into town and every squandered there were state police cars and state policemen are standing outside the cars looking very alert and kind of worried
and we need to have no idea what we had encountered what we had walked into or driven into but actually president John Kennedy was there on that weekend %HESITATION and he was giving the only address of his presidency on higher education and %HESITATION %HESITATION he was giving head out the opening are known on the opening the ground breaking other libraries that I subsequently satin did doodles
on the margins wall looking out you know into the middle distance thinking about girls from Smith College start off on a first year history are and and the library was named after Robert Frost who had been the poet in residence at Amherst College for many years subsequently died and the connection with Kennedy is the frosted spoken Kennedy's inaugural and so she came to a terrorist college
to give %HESITATION groundbreaking address %HESITATION at the %HESITATION at the at the college and here's what he said no this is something that I actually hurt in real life I didn't watch this on television it's probably got the American civil rights movement in mind is not the actual event so well involving the little rock nine what good is a college or university unless it is serving
a great national purpose this college does not exist merely to give this school's graduates and phenomics and the life struggle it does do that but in return for that in return for the great opportunity which society gives the graduates it seems to me incumbent upon the school's graduates to recognize their responsibility to the public in privileges here and with privilege goes responsibility there is inherited wealth
in this country and also inherited poverty and unless the graduates of this college who are given a running start in life unless they are willing to put back into our society those talents the broad sympathy the understanding the compassion unless they're willing to put those qualities back into the service of the great Republic and obviously the presuppositions upon which our democracy our democracy are based are
bound a fallible Kennedy thought that privilege the great privilege of privilege isn't a way to extinguish privilege that the chances that we were being given at an elite college where chances that we had to turn to the betterment of all and that if we weren't able to do that one of the fundamental basis for democracy would be under my that if we constituted ourselves as a
as an elite living in a bubble indifferent to the poverty that we saw around us that our democracy would be undermined we maybe witnessing not happening now in the United States Kennedy was speaking at a time when the gap between rich and poor was two orders of magnitude less than it is now he was speaking at a time when there was still very little difference between
the rich and the poor %HESITATION in monetary terms anyway compared to the differences that exist now my final example is really a contemporary one and it's %HESITATION Ballala yourself side and case you don't recognize her picture I'm she is a young Pakistani woman issue still still Girlicious still only sixteen years old and a couple of years ago I she was shot and nearly killed for standing
up a partly through her social networking and partly through her on I uses the BBC world service for standing up for the rights of girls to be educated in the swat valley and pack she was shop for her troubles on and %HESITATION she to recognize the importance of education in relation to human dignity and again this is an alternative discourse about what the purposes of education
are on the purposes of education to increase the gross national product one of the purposes of educate %HESITATION your lifetime earnings know the purposes of education lie elsewhere and here's what she had to say she is speaking of her father who was also an educational reform her %HESITATION in in Pakistan he said his sisters my hands do not go to school at all just like millions
of girls in my country education had been a great gift for him he believed that lack of education was at the root of all Pakistan's problems ignorance allowed politicians to four people and dad administrators to be reelected you believe schooling should be available for all rich and poor boys and girls the school that my father dreamed up would have desks and a library shooters right posters
on the walls and most important washer Malala Yousafzai does not speak from power and privilege as John Kennedy did three she speaks from the disempowered to the December she speaks not of jobs and not of the gross national product bride of the dignity that washrooms and bright posters and computers and a chance for girls and boys for people from different ethnic and religious backgrounds to sit
together to learn together the importance of not for democracy for a civilized society so this is an old idea an idea that has roots in the conservative political tradition an idea that has roots the social democratic political tradition is an old idea that education is for democracy that education is for civilization that is right for our new time WNED
