Covid 19, Education & Social Mobility
Black and other Ethnic Minorities take the toll
The lockdown has given us time to rethink what matters most to us. We instinctively cling to our family and our next of kin. We also ponder what the future holds for our children. As a voracious reader I came across a couple of intriguing pieces about Education and Public Universities in the past week.
The articles summarised that the chasm between private and public universities were exacerbating the great divide between the haves and have nots. The path from an exclusive private Ivy League university to a life of privilege and luxury contrasts that to a public university graduate with limited life prospects and a burdensome student loan that has to be paid off some time in the future.
Since the epidemic reached the United States, 23 students, faculty and staff of the City University of New York (CUNY) have died. 16 of them have died due to Covid 19. CUNY is the largest urban public university system in the US.*
As usual I shared the piece with Uncle who replied with his customary wit:
“Baba Raihan,
The corona pandemic has brought us face to face with so many issues of grave importance. You have observed by this time that skeletons have started tumbling out of the cupboard whose veneer used to dazzle us. People in the rich and powerful countries woke up to the stark reality that everything is not well.
I was wondering if we could discuss some aspects of our system of education, higher education in particular. When I was ruminating, the name of John Henry Newman instantly sprang to my mind. Born in the first year of the nineteenth century, Newman was not a particularly outstanding student at Oxford, he made a name for himself as the Chaplain of Oriel College, Vicar of the University Church and editor of the British Critic. He was the founding Rector of the Catholic University, Dublin (which later evolved into University College, Dublin).
His lectures and writings have been compiled in his seminal work, The Idea of a University.
He postulates “the very name of university is inconsistent with restrictions of any kind.” Different branches of knowledge should not exist in isolation with each other. They should know each other, inform each other: an inclusive and holistic view of the concept of learning and dissemination of knowledge. He argues, the pursuit of Truth without any fear, without any prejudice and without any compromise should be the aim of a university. Science and scientific enquiry was important in the pursuit of ‘Truth’. Truth as he envisages, may take time and may have to go through the process of trial and error to emerge. One should not be despondent of the failures in scientific investigations because “all the time it is advancing, and it is a gain to truth even to have learned what is not true, if nothing more”.
Locke and Mill propounded the theory that the objective of educational institutions is the acquisition and development of skills that are marketable and that can be gainfully employed in the pursuit of the greater economic agenda. Newman views this concept as flawed and opines that specialisation in a particular discipline should not form the sole purpose of education. Preparing for a particular career cannot and should not be the sole aim of pursuing higher education. University curriculum needs to be designed in a way where the teachers and learners could engage themselves in identifying various social issues, numerous scientific problems and above all the most difficult philosophical questions of mankind. Education should not be compartmentalised in a way where the teachers and scholars are busy in honing skills of their own trade being totally oblivious of the crying needs of the society and humanity at large.
Newman conceived a University to be a seat of universal learning where most brilliant young minds flock together, engage themselves in investigations in the claims and relations of their respective subjects of study.
In the cataclysmic situation that we have been thrown in to by the deadliest of our enemies, coronavirus, Newman needs to be reconsidered. Don’t you think that the worship of Mammon of biblical proportions needs to be shunned? How long can we or should we go pursuing Mammon at the expense of humanism and humanity.
Corona in Bangla tells you ‘tumi kichhu koro’. Corona tells you to do something.
It is not a question of how and when; it is a question of now or never as stated by Hamlet:
“Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take up arms against a sea of troubles.”
With regards to the systemic malaise the public universities have been enduring for long; not because they lack merit, dedication or diligence; what they lack is the careful attention of the politicians and policy makers and the society at large.
When inequality is the norm in society, where patronage and privilege rule the roost, a public university cannot aspire for the lofty goals of equality. Any serious observer can easily find out that the main objective of a university like CUNY is to ensure some kind of upward mobility for the vast majority of students coming from the lower middle or middle class. The whole system is divided and stratified in such a way that the wealthy and the privileged will co-exist like two railway tracks running side by side; one cannot touch the other signifying the deep divide drawn mainly on economic lines.
Cosmetic changes here and there may not serve the purpose of attaining the goal of equal learning and equal opportunities. It is imperative to overhaul the entire system and only then it can move forward.
The article states that there are inadequate facilities in the bathrooms of CUNY, non-existence of such basic items as soaps to wash hands only point out the naked reality of discrimination and disparity, indifference and nonchalance in a much-vaunted rich and powerful society such as the US.
The terror and turbulence triggered by Covid 19 has started shaking the statecraft violently; the lives of the unsuspecting passengers in serious dangers, those in the cockpit have to awaken themselves not only for the benefit of passengers but for their own sake. Covid has unmasked the culture of self-aggrandisement and self-deception gleefully espoused and followed by the rich and the powerful.
Had not corona made its sudden and inauspicious visit the sordid state of affairs probably would have remained buried till some social archaeologists would undertake some kind of excavation in the future.
Democracy, as has been eminently defined by one of their greatest Presidents “government of the people, by the people and for the people” is not only an obtuse concept. It is an ideal and a goal the founding fathers of US sought to profess, pursue and promote. This is a course that has been prudently charted by them; the powers that be are required to keep the statecraft on course. Any deviation wilful or otherwise may result in disastrous consequences. Abraham Lincoln, I suppose, had the premonition which is why he eloquently sounded a note of caution, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time”.
One is baffled by the non-existence of certain basic amenities and resources that are sine qua non for a great institution imparting providing education to a quarter million seekers of knowledge. An institution engaged in providing much needed education of more than a quarter million students relies mostly on tuition fees at the expense of quality education.
I don’t find any mention in the article but I can safely assume that inadequate funding results in compromising the quality of education being offered and delivered at CUNY. As an inevitable consequence, the large number of graduates are thrown into a job market where they are likely to encounter stiff competition for which they have not been adequately prepared.
They are unlikely to achieve the mobility they so fervently cherish and so passionately strive for. They fall prey to a vicious cycle of less preparation, less opportunity, less mobility and less attainment for no fault of their own.
The rich and the powerful make lavish grants to the Ivy League Universities not being driven by altruistic leanings but by the lure of tax cuts and tax exemptions. They aim to serve their own purpose of guarding and perpetuating the system whose products they are.
When education has been made a means to an end not an end in itself, events of this nature are likely to happen with more regularity than not.
I feel tempted to end with a quote from Thomas Gray’s Elegy written in a country churchyard:
“The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”
8 May 2020
Covid 19 has cast a long shadow on the lower socioeconomic groups groups especially among ethnic minorities in the UK and the US.**
Universities and public universities in particular play a pivotal part in social mobility. The transformative power of higher education can lead to upward mobility creating more space for social justice.
It’s this transformation that the post-Covid world desperately needs.
