Universities must develop thinkers to improve society
IWRITE my weekly column on a Sunday because it is a good day for sober reflection. Besides, this Sunday is also Senior Citizens’ Day. So to my readers (both of them): happy Senior Citizens’ Day. One interesting report in a sea of chaotic confrontation between students and a particular university tells of a student who was badly lacerated trying to cross a barbed-wire barrier to gain access to the campus in order to deliver an assignment.
This report bristles with contradictions and ironies that typify the confusion of the times.
We have fought and survived two world wars, racism, slavery, colonial rapacity, Donald Trump’s hairstyle, Zuma’s intransigence, Blade’s sacking, evaporating reservoirs and roller-coasting petrol prices.
We are still trying to deal with the mindless closing down of schools, public arson, hungry children, battered wives, abandoned families and food stores who make more money selling liquor.
We are preparing for Angie’s annual statistics which will lie about how many matriculants are really ready for life.
All of the above disasters have elements in common: a singular lack of vision, a serving of an insatiable hegemony of power-mongers and an inability to produce thinkers who could guide us through our diminishing fortunes.
It also resonates with the church leaders who spend their lives collecting academic rewards for pontificating on the connection between hunger and reduced cognition in learners. Wake up, South Africa. It’s not about who is going to succeed Zuma; it’s about who is going to switch off the lights after the monied class decide to leave.
It’s about producing water from unplanned dry water beds. It’s about housing that is falling behind faster than the informal sector is mushrooming.
The young student who was impaled on the barbed-wire typifies our dilemma. He is a recent high school graduate. He comes to campus with politics as his major interest.
He decries and ignores the basic mores of institutional conformity, goes on rampages, and then realises that the campus he set alight is now closed.
The university makes many feeble attempts via court injunctions, threetiered security expenses and fighting between its leaders to realise a successful academic year.
Everything fails as the dialogue has broken down. The basics have been set aside in favour of anecdotal thrust and parry called negotiation.
Renegotiate truths. Universities are for learning to cope with life and improving society. It’s not a hot bed for transient and migratory political thugs. Enrolment requires an undertaking to observe decency, respect for authority and a willingness to develop the mind and skills that are needed for our survival.
Do the maths.