Barney Pityana writes that #SONA2017 failed to give the nation a vision and a new, higher imagination about the intrinsic value of higher education.
In the last two years student protests at campuses across the country have brought the spotlight on higher education in a manner that is hard to imagine. Those of us who were student leaders in the campus protests in previous generations, and even those of us who had been active in the liberation movement are just as astounded by the resilience of the protest movement on campuses in our time.
The irony is that whether we were the revolutionaries of our time on campuses, or in combat for the liberation of our country, somehow fortune has now thrust upon us the responsibility to superintend the fortunes of the younger minds of our time, and to steer this nation into a deeper sense of itself and well-being.
For that reason, it was one of the lost opportunities that have become characteristic of President Jacob Zuma’s leadership that the State of the Nation Address 2017 failed to lift this nation beyond the otherwise dull and tedious lack of imagination about higher education. Yes, it was important to set out what government has done to address the concerns of the students, and in that regard it cannot be disputed that much has been done. What he failed to do is to give this nation a vision and a new, higher imagination about the intrinsic value of higher education.
Barney Pityana is adviser to the Thabo Mbeki Foundation
The meaning of higher education is more than the numbers and material benefits that university studies are supposed to assure, (what WEB du Bois calls “breadwinning”). Since Nelson Mandela, this nation has presented the case for education and its values in jobs and social security. Such expectations are there and they are very high. The truth, however, is that we have failed to deliver on such promises.
Too many young people drop out of school, while many with the privilege of attending universities fail to complete their studies in the allotted time for a variety of reasons. Even more alarming, a disproportionate number fail to find jobs once they graduate. Maybe we should start by asserting that education is an essential element for the achievement of our true humanity.
In its essence, education is about human development, understanding the world and oneself in it, and cultivating those skills and intelligence necessary to empower people to become fully human. The world of science and technology, of culture and history, of society and its people are best unlocked by stretching human intelligence, and curiosity leading to the joy and satisfaction of accomplishment. Education is life. Education feeds the human desire to know, and to know more.
In South Africa, education occupies pride of place in our National Budget. This has been the case since 1994. And yet inequalities prevail; inadequate facilities and provision remain; resentment, anger and lack of fulfilment are features of our national psyche, if one may so generalise. That explains how it is that whenever we protest we destroy educational facilities. Children are kept out of school whenever we have beef about service delivery. Libraries and laboratories and school transport go up in smoke if our demands are not met. This suggests that South Africa is not emotionally attached to the education institutions the state has provided.
As Du Bois, the African-American educationist and philosopher, stated in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), that higher education should cultivate a profound sense of values, of refinement of character, of service to others, and the cultivation of the mind. Through education we learn empathy, and outrage when things go wrong; and yet we also value attributes like joy, love, aesthetics, critical judgment and the sublime. Higher education should transform character and shape moral leaders and intellectuals.
In his words, the function of a university is “to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, and adjustment which forms the secret of civilisation.” When we do that we shall be able to separate things that are of value from mere trivia. We shall employ strategy to accomplish our objectives, and we shall understand the difference between what is essential for survival and what is necessary for human happiness and the joy of accomplishment.
Our education system, in particular, should rather seek to achieve that which is stated in the preamble to the constitution: (to) improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person.
The impasse in higher education may not be resolved by commissions of inquiry, or by throwing more money into the pockets of students or the coffers of institutions, or by the use of excessive force at university campuses, or by the imprisonment of student activists or even by isolating student leaders. We’d do well to create at our campuses forums for debate and dialogue.
Thabo Mbeki will be installed as Chancellor of Unisa on Monday. One hopes that he could take the opportunity to rally this nation into a renewed imagination about higher education, and call this nation to a new appreciation of its potential for good.
* Barney Pityana is adviser to the Thabo Mbeki Foundation and writes in his personal capacity.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.