Speech
University of Canterbury Graduation Address
May I begin by greeting everyone in the languages of the realm of New Zealand - in English, Maori, Cook Island Maori, Niuean, Tokelauan and New Zealand Sign Language. Greetings, Kia Ora, Kia Orana, Fakalofa Lahi Atu, Taloha Ni and as it is morning and the sun has risen (Sign)
May I specifically acknowledge you: Chancellor Dr Robin Mann; Pro Chancellor; John Simpson; Vice-Chancellor; Professor Roy Sharp; Fellow Members of the University Council; University staff and students; graduands, distinguished guests otherwise; Ladies and Gentlemen.
Thank you for inviting me to attend and participate in the University of Canterbury's 2007 graduation celebrations. I would like to speak about the value of education the graduands have received and the significance of your graduation today.
American psychologist, the late Dr B.F. Skinner, once said that: "education is what remains when what has been learned has been forgotten." This may seem a puzzling comment to make to people who have just completed a period of intense study and learning.
To explain, I will outline a little of my own education. When I went to secondary school in Auckland, we studied Shakespeare in English, the English Civil Wars in History, simultaneous equations in Mathematics and Ohm's Law in Science. Those subjects are still taught in schools today along with many other things.
While I will admit that being able to use a crisp quote from Shakespeare or history has been helpful in my career as a lawyer, judge and ombudsman, I doubt whether I have ever used a simultaneous equation or needed to call on Ohm's Law since I left school 45 years ago. To be honest, I doubt I could even do a simultaneous equation and my knowledge of Ohm's Law can only be described as scratchy.
On the basis of the use I have made of English and History in my career, one could thus argue that studying them was worthwhile whilst studying simultaneous equations and Ohm's Law were not. In a very narrow, practical sense, one could argue that that conclusion was correct. But in a wider sense, the logic is not only wrong, but also flawed.
What learning about Shakespeare, the English civil wars, simultaneous equations and Ohm's Law provided me with, was not the skills to be a literary critic, historian, mathematician, engineer or physicist but a fundamental ability to analyse, to write and, I might add, complete a few simple calculations.
At University, those fundamental skills were further developed. From a school environment where one was "taught," at University I entered an environment of "learning" where increasingly I became was a partner in my own education. Had I gone on to do postgraduate study, as many of you have or will do, the process of education would have increasingly been founded on collaboration and equality. Additionally for those graduating with postgraduate degrees you will have undertaken significant research and added to quantum of human knowledge and understanding of our world.
But a key aspect of my own University education is that I learned how to approach a new problem I might know little about, and began the process of understanding and analysis before being able to mount an argument about it. As a law student it was in the form of an essay. As a lawyer it was in a submission to court. As a judge it might be a legal decision or summing up to a jury and as an ombudsman, it was a report or recommendation regarding a complaint from a member of the public.
Throughout my career, there was no way in which I might know of every legal issue or precedent I might face. But what I did have was the ability to find the information I needed, and the skill to extract from it enough to understand and then hopefully solve the problem being faced.
That in essence is what the psychologist BF Skinner meant when he said education was what remained when what had been learned had been forgotten. The instant recall of how to do a simultaneous equation may fall away with time, but fundamental skills will always be with you regardless of the task you may be performing in four years' time or forty years' time.
I will give another example of how these fundamental skills are so valuable. I would hazard a guess that most people here have use of a cell phone. They are an integral part of all aspects of life in the 21st Century from business through to family and social life.
The cell phone industry is also of multi-billion proportions industry employing many thousands of people worldwide. That includes the people who design and manufacture them; those who build and maintain their technological infrastructure as well as many others who sell, market and administer the various billing systems for them.
But this cell phone industry and all the jobs that go with it simply did not exist 30 years ago. There is no way that the education system could provide skills for jobs for an industry that didn't exist.
But what our education system, and particularly our Universities, did provide was the people who had sufficient skills in technology, science, marketing, information management and administration who built the industry that exists today. They were people who, in their various disciplines, developed the knowledge they had, applied critical thinking and, by working collaboratively in teams, were able to communicate that new knowledge to others. I am certain in predicting that many of you here today will finish your working lives in industries that do not exist today.
What your education has also provided you with is also a wider understanding of who we are, where we came from and how our world works. Because our culture is a written culture, it is based on the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of much more than a thousand years of learning that is stored in libraries, archives and increasingly in computer databases.
The former Head of the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, Jim Traue, put this well when he said:
"As the inheritors of a written culture we can wear it lightly because we no longer need to depend on memory. We may not be able to recite our genealogies, or all of Shakespeare or Milton or the Bible, but nevertheless they are there, indestructible, immutable, always there when we need them, safe in the storehouses outside of our minds our culture has created. Just as agricultural societies could store their surplus food, so literate societies could store their intellectual surplus, their experience, to call on in the future when it was needed."
It is often said that when you graduate, the University formally welcomes you to the community of scholars. But it is also an acknowledgement that your ability to access what Jim Traue called our culture's "intellectual surplus" is of a higher standard.
It is also an acknowledgement of the sacrifice and investment of time and effort you have made, and of the support of partners, parents, family and whanau. They too can stand tall with you today and share pride in your achievement.
Reaping the rewards of that intellectual surplus also means that obligations arise in regard to the wider community that has also invested in your education. With your graduation, a mantle passes to each of you to make this day the first step in using your qualifications. You have it in your power to better yourselves. You also have it in your power to improve conditions and processes for the communities that you will serve and will make our country—or wherever your career takes you—a better place.
And in that, many of you will become our future leaders. I cannot think of better comment with which to conclude than one by a wonderful New Zealander, the late Dame Whina Cooper, whose words on the responsibilities of leadership capture this point well. As quoted in the late Dr Michael King's biography Whina she said:
I can't sleep at night, because even at night I'm worrying about things and planning things. It's the mana, you see. If you've got it, it never lets you alone. You have to be thinking about the people and working for them, all the time.
On that note I will close in Maori, by offering greetings and wishing everyone, but particularly you today's graduands, good health and fortitude in your endeavours. No reira, tena koutou, tena koutou, kia ora, kia kaha, tena koutou katoa