Remarks

Remarks

by
Dr. H. Ian Macdonald
Chairman
The Commonwealth of Learning

upon being conferred an
Honorary Doctor of Letters (Hon. D.Lett.)
"his eminence in the fields of academia and government
and his special contribution to distance education."

by The Open University of Sri Lanka

OUSL convocation ceremony
Colombo, Sri Lanka
18 June 1999

Mr. Chancellor,
Dear Friends and Colleagues
Members of the Graduating Class
Ladies and Gentlemen

Even in this world of jet travel, instant communication and the evolving Internet, I have a sense of awe and amazement to be addressing you this afternoon in Colombo. It is a long way, in space and time, from my home in Toronto, Canada: space in the sense of being honoured half-way around the world and close to the southern hemisphere; time in the sense of my upbringing as the son of Scottish immigrant parents who left school at the age of fourteen to come to Canada.

I also have a sense of undeserved privilege to be receiving this honour at your hands, Mr. Chancellor. I come from a relatively new country - 132 years since the founding Act of Confederation - albeit one of the world's longest surviving federations. You come from an ancient society with a rich history and diverse cultures that has experienced a continuing metamorphosis over centuries. Moreover, I am the least deserving here to speak on behalf of the graduates at this Convocation today. I know how hard you have worked to earn your degrees, what sacrifices you have made to persevere to that end, and how significant this occasion must be for you and your families. May I, at least, suggest that you - the graduates - stand and applaud your families, your friends and all your loved ones who are here today, for the sacrifices they have made and the support they have given you.

May I also thank you, Mr. Chancellor, and through you, the members of the Open University of Sri Lanka, for the honour conferred on me in becoming an honorary doctor of the Open University of Sri Lanka. The story is told of a young university graduate reporting to work for his first job. His employer greeted him, and promptly handed him a broom. "What's this for?" inquired the young man. "That's your job - sweeping the floor" answered the boss. In righteous indignation, the new employee drew himself up to his full height and proclaimed: "But I have a B.A. degree!" "Well, just relax" was the reply: "We'll show you how to use it!" Now that I have an Honorary Doctorate from this University, what might I expect next?

How ironic it is that the things we value most are so often the source of our humour. In fact, there is nothing that could give me greater satisfaction than such an honour from The Open University of Sri Lanka, because this assembly of university graduates represents what is becoming an endangered concept in the public policy of many countries: universal accessibility to higher education at a time of our greatest need. Recently, I received word of the death of a dear friend and a prototype of what you represent in this university. In the early 1950's, when I was a student at Balliol College, Oxford, the College established an Open Scholarship for a mature student, working in a modest job. Leaving his family in the Midlands, my friend John came to Oxford at age 45, lived in the College, entered fully into university life, and after three years took a distinguished degree. From a background of various humble positions in a hospital, John went on to become a distinguished professor of hospital administration first in England and finally in Australia. This is not in any sense to denigrate his earlier work, nor to suggest an elitist interpretation of higher education. Rather, I am speaking of the opportunity for maximising individual human achievement which is the ultimate purpose of education.

That Oxford should have made a place available in that fashion inspired him, and left an indelible impression on me. As a result, I have often speculated that had open universities been created fifty years earlier, perhaps my Scottish parents might have followed the same route. Open universities and distance education have transformed the meaning of accessibility to university, and made it a living reality. And so, the beneficiaries are not only the legion of graduates, but also the community of nations wherever those graduates reside. Although Elgar was not thinking in those terms when he wrote:

"Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set"

accessibility to education is surely the best route to a "Land of Hope and Glory". Unfortunately, as we approach the millennium, we are still falling short, by 140 million children, of the pledges made to achieve universal access to basic education by the year 2000, quite apart from the obstacles to higher education.

To help in bridging that gap is the purpose of The Commonwealth of Learning and the reason for my commitment as volunteer Chairman. Dedicated to distance education and open learning, in the face of the limitless need and demands across the Commonwealth, The Commonwealth of Learning draws on the inspiration of institutions such as your own, and is committed to providing support for access to education, at all stages. In turn, your example sustains us in our work, and this new graduate of your University will continue to fight the good fight for accessibility to all, at every stage of life, fortified by my membership in the Open University of Sri Lanka.

However, before I refer further to The Commonwealth of Learning, let me return to the theme to which I alluded a few minutes ago: the ultimate purpose of education. For many years and in most places, philosophers have argued about the purpose of education: is it for individual betterment as an end in itself, or should it be occupational preparation? In his famous discourses in 1852, Cardinal John Henry Newman argued "Knowledge is capable of being its own end. Such is the constitution of the human mind, that any kind of knowledge, if it be really such, is its own reward." And yet, at that very time, the great universities of Oxford and Cambridge were also designed for occupational preparation: to produce teachers, lawyers, ministers, doctors and public servants.

The answer, of course, is that education has always served both purposes. If the education is well-conducted and if the learning process is reciprocal between student and teacher, then human development will occur both in the broad sense of the term as well as in the utilitarian sense. Certainly, over the past forty-four years of my varied career, I have found that to be the case. How else to explain the enduring thirst for education? In that time, I have encountered a number of interesting students - mostly successful, but often unusual. I think here of two in particular. In the first class that I taught on the Principles of Economics, there was a young man in his early thirties who was already a multi-millionaire; he had benefited from the post-war boom in Canada to make a fortune in housing development. And I was to teach him the Principles of Economics? When I asked him why he had now come to university, he replied that he wanted to be a successful human being as well as a rich entrepreneur! The second individual took his degree at age 87. He had left school when only 14 to help support his family, and had worked all his life at a variety of jobs. When I asked him the same question, he replied, that he wanted to be better prepared for the after life than he had been for the first! Whatever the merits of the case, it could certainly be argued that both were enjoying a luxury, in contrast to the millions of people in the world who are denied an education even of the most basic kind. However, both cases illustrate two points about education:

• the primary importance of access;
• the more enduring purposes of education.

That takes me to the final point that I wish to address in a world that increasingly perceives "globalization" as a heaven-sent value, delivered by its agents, the multinational corporations of the world. As I have suggested, education is about human resource development, for the betterment of people as well as the enhancement of economic opportunity; thus it must always be perceived and assessed in the context of human values. As the economist Kenneth Boulding has suggested: "Human values are the product of an evolutionary process; they have no more equilibrium than anything else...We are always moving into a changing future in which we hope that things will go from bad to better instead of from bad to worse. That is all the quality of life means, going from bad to better instead of bad to worse."

I want you to know that I do not believe that Western economic values are necessarily the most appropriate for the rest of the world. Indeed, they are not necessarily always the best for the West. We must be cautious about whose interest globalization is designed to serve; certainly it is not always the interest of the people of the world. As Nelson Mandela remarked recently: "Is globalization only to benefit the powerful and the speculators? Does it offer nothing to men, woman and children who are ravaged by poverty?" And well he might ask, for 51 of the 100 largest economies in the world are corporations, while the 300 largest corporations account for 25 per cent of the world's productive assets, and the combined revenue of General Motors and Ford, the two largest automobile corporations, exceeds the combined gross domestic product for all of sub-Saharan Africa. Moreover, while nearly a billion and a half people have no access to clean water, and a billion live in miserably substandard housing, the world's three richest individuals have assets that exceed the combined gross domestic product of the poorest forty-eight countries.

Our task is not only to enhance the gross national product, but also to ensure that relief of poverty, improved health services, and accessibility to education for those 140 million of the world's children - including a majority of girl children - still denied access to basic education become priorities for action.

For the past 50 years, missionaries from the Western world have been suggesting to the developing world "how to do it" and have been preoccupied with studying the conditions in those countries. During the next 50 years, might it not be beneficial - or at least fair - to reverse the trend and have the developing world examine the West more closely to see if that is what it really wants? In particular, I think of the attitudinal wave of reform sweeping the Western world, driven by what some call neo-liberals, and others neo-conservatives, but what I believe are really neo-mercantilists. It is best summed up by the proposition that governments can do no right! But good government is central to development, for who else does provide for the well-being of the people?

Those who ever bothered to read past the early chapters of Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations would discover that his invisible hand of the market place was not disconnected from a central nervous system. "Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer." So said Smith. In fact, it is fair to say that it is not even production, but profits, which are the driving force of the market economy. But surely the bottom line is not the best indicator of social utility any more than the GNP is a measure of well-being as opposed to wealth. Nor did he perceive the private sector and the market always to be superior to public service. He clearly recognized, in many instances, that there is a role for government - and often a preferred role.

And so, let us remind the neo-mercantilists that those concepts so dear to them: deregulation, decentralization, privatization, contracting out, alternative service delivery, downsizing, re-engineering, and re-inventing government may be like so many fashion models on the runway, soon to be overtaken by their successors. The great Canadian economic historian, H.A. Innis, has argued that institutions like civilizations, contain the seeds of their own replacement, similar to the "creative destruction" described by Joseph Schumpeter. The private sector, in which so many would appear to have supreme confidence, is not all wine and roses, particularly in the clothes of the new emperor: globalization.

The American baseball legend, Yogi Berra, to whom numerous malapropisms are attributed, once remarked: "When you come to a fork in the road, I say take it." We have come to a number of forks, as we approach the millenium, but I am confident that you, the graduating class of the Open University of Sri Lanka, will choose wise routes, armed with the degree which you receive today from the Chancellor. May those journeys also be happy and peaceful.

H. Ian Macdonald

18 June 1999