Blogs • Revd Tim Hurd (Former Chaplain)

My nephew has a job as a waiter. At least he did last night.

All of 5 1/4, he and his Primary colleagues from St Francis Xavier school cooked, served and entertained last night for their parents and families. What did they prepare? What else: burgers.

Now, I’m told the food was actually very good.

But in a moment of cynicism I can’t help but make the unfair and totally unfounded leap… So just what is our education system preparing us for?

A job at McCafe? Surely not.

A role further up the corporate McLadder? Maybe.

Does education - and especially tertiary education - only fit us for a career, or is it supposed to do something else as well? Or even instead?

Back in the 1990s we moved - at least financially - from the idea that higher education benefited society as a whole, to acknowledging that it benefited the individual concerned. Hence the advent of student fees, student loans, and the ongoing remodeling of institutions.

If you approved, this remodeling was about making education relevant, outcome-oriented, and bringing a medieval institution kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat (for you Terry Pratchett fans).

If you did not, this was the age when our Polytechnics wanted to become Universities, and our Universities tried their very hardest to become Polytechnics: vocational training centres, where knowledge and learning for its own sake was a perverse and flabby indulgence.

Both descriptions of course are caricatures, but in a world where George W. Bush is electable and reality TV still pulls the punters, what do we make of wisdom?

With a capital “W”, wisdom is one of the biblical descriptions, personifications or attributes of God.

Our University motto is Sapere aude: “Dare to be wise”.

What does it mean to “dare to be wise” in our world, and our still “tall-poppy” culture?

What does it mean to be a literal philosopher, a “lover of wisdom”?

Do we study to be moulded or enlarged?

To answer questions or to ask them?

Perhaps in that’s the difference between the burger and El Bulli (ref. Monday’s interview on National Radio).

Go on. Be wise. I dare ya.