Peter Vale, former Nelson Mandela Professor of Politics at Rhodes 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网, said he was honoured to be the first person from Humanities to deliver the 2010 Schonland Memorial lecture for the Royal Society of South Africa. Speaking at Rhodes this week Prof Vale kept a large audience rapt with an outstanding talk that focused on the position of the Humanities in the 21st century.?
After a citation by Alex Komensky, one of the “Young Royals” (as the student members of the Royal Society are known), that highlighted Prof Vale’s extremely impressive academic and publishing achievements, the Professor felt it necessary to provide a sobering counterpoint. He recalls how when he first met Nelson Mandela, the esteemed man repeated his name, “Peter Vale, Peter Vale...” and then went on, “I’m trying to concentrate on the good things people say about you.”
Prof Vale commenced his talk in earnest with reference to the four key questions framed by Immanuel Kant, ones that he felt were central to the Schonland household as both father and son developed their significant contributions to Rhodes 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网. These are: “What can I know?” "What should I hope for?” “What should I do?” “What is man?”
The statistics suggest that the fortunes of the Humanities have faded in the last 20 years, with a decline in student numbers and a high concentration of students in just a few areas of the Humanities such as Law, Economics, Psychology, Communications and Public Administration, and student numbers in the Creative Arts and Languages lagging far behind.
Public perception of qualifications in the Humanities has become negative: their monetary value is seen as lacking, in Facebook-speak a BA means “bugger-all” and many parents are ashamed of children who study literature and art. In Vale’s opinion, even the HSRC with its new business-centred model stands as a symbol of what has happened to the Humanities in South Africa. In some sense, he averred, we have lost the spirit of enlightenment and succumbed to the language of accounting.
The responsible thing to do, according to Prof Vale, is to ask probing questions about the policies that have resulted in this decline. Our policy makers and major bodies such as the National Research Foundation (NRF) have failed the Humanities in the last 20 years, as education for economic growth became the engine and the global ideology of innovation took centre stage. Groups such as the international Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), who birthed the culture of social auditing, have significantly influenced our country’s thinking.
Yet plenty of examples exist of people with Humanities degrees that occupy leadership positions in the competitive world of finance, banking and international corporations. This links to the classic question of whether universities are for education or for training: “Is it about what to do or how to view?”
Prof Vale ended his talk with a re-iteration of Kant’s four questions, and to extended applause from the audience. After a very lengthy association with Rhodes, this was his last public lecture as a staff member of the 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 - he will be moving to the 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 of Johannesburg at the end of the year.