/ 29 April 2011

Quo vadis university education?

Graduations took place all over the country last month. Flashbulbs popped on stages as chancellors conferred degrees on the bowed heads of thousands of graduates. Chris Mann, professor of poetry at Rhodes, expresses some of the global concerns about the future and the impact of higher education on young people in a song-poem dedicated to his son, who is among this year’s graduates.

Twenty-first Century Graduation Song
for Luke Mann

1
I hope you never sweat your blood
For no mean corporation,
I hope you never fire a shot
For warring faith or nation.

I hope you never have to please
A two-faced politician,
I pray you never make a god
Of money and ambition.

I hope you never work so hard
You lose your sense of fun.
What’s life without a joke and laugh,
A braai out in the sun?

So take your learning to the world
But live to sing a song,
And may you always be as wise
And gentle as you’re strong.

2
I know you’ll brush aside the hand
That’s held out for a bribe,
I know you’ll see the human being
Before the race or tribe.

I know you’ll learn to live content
With what you can afford,
I trust you’ll pass on to your kids
That virtue’s its reward.

I pray you never cease to hope
Right through the hardest year
And walk in awe below the stars
And scorn a cynic’s sneer.

And may you learn from my mistakes
And where the past went wrong,
And may you always be as wise
And gentle as you’re strong.

3
Please never think the intellect’s
The grail of evolution,
Lord knows that educated folk
Are leaders in pollution.

I hope your generation makes
The fragile planet last
And never runs in rags to flee
An eco-holocaust.

I hope you cleanse the fumes of hell
From cars and chimney stacks
Yet learn to make as many jobs
As folk who starve in shacks.

The mind’s a sky of flying thoughts,
They feed where we belong,
So may you always be as wise
And gentle as you’re strong.

4
I know you’ll stand your sacred ground
Despite your education,
Lord knows so many clever folk
Are skilled at desecration.

I hope you’ll pray enough each day
To free love’s calm within,
I hope your soul’s a house of shades
For foreign folk and kin.

And may the dove of Noah’s ark
Sing in your adult song,
And may you always be, my son,
As wise and gentle as you’re strong.