Vadis the B . A . degree : Perceptions and visions i

Today is a very special day for all the graduates assembled to have a B.A. degree conferred on them. It is a day on which to celebrate the reward for hard work and for realized dreams. This is a very homogeneous group of people - in the sense that they will be receiving B.A. degrees, and for that reason it would be highly apposite to share some cherished thought and ideas about the B.A. degree.


Preamble
A global perspective would be necessary at the outset, for at the end o f the twentieth century we have become inevitably and irrevocably part o f the global village, indeed, w e have increasingly become part o f the 'electronic cottage', and what is happening in this country is a spin-off also o f global forces, albeit with a distinctly South African local flavour.
W e are living in exciting times -although many people would perhaps prefer to exchange excitement for stability and security.The age in which w e find ourselves is described by some historians as the post-industrial age.In his book The Third Wave (1980)  Koerx 58 (2) 1993:119-125 Quo vailis the B.A. degree: Perceptions and visions civilization is emerging in our lives ... it brings with it new family styles; changed ways o f working, loving and living; a new economy; new political conflicts; and beyond all this an altered consciousness as well " (1980:23).He goes on to say that Humanity faces a quantum leap forward.It faces the deepest social up heaval and creative restructuring o f all time ... the emergent civilization writes a new code o f behaviour for us and carries us beyond standardi zation, synchronization and centralization, beyond the concentration o f energy, money and pow er (1980:23-24).This is said o f the whole world out there, and in South Africa this is made im measurably more complex by other forces at work too.
In the movement o f the world away from the Second W ave, or the industrial era, Toffler sees mankind as suffering a battering at the hands o f a giant w ave o f change, for in the transition o f one wave o f civilization to the other there are colliding w aves o f change, and the challenge o f the times lies in how successfully we are going to ride and crest the wave.W e have gone beyond the industrial revolution, w e are living in the centre o f the electronic revolution, and w e are experiencing, as an unavoidable concomitant o f all this, a social revolution the like o f which we have not seen in the world and then more particularly in this country.All this represents profound change.
The theme o f my story is indeed change.
Who is going to be responsible for effecting and monitoring, for managing this change?W hat should the individuals look like who are going to be responsible?
The responsibility for change ultimately and unavoidably lies with us, and our children -we have to accept the challenge and run with it.W e have, through a creative engagement with the forces at work in society to work tow ards the reconstitution, ultimately, o f civilization itself -we have a destiny to co-constitute.God gave mankind a sacred mandate, the cultural m andate to subdue the earth and be a stew ard over it, and in the complex, dangerous and exciting world in which we live, I would like to suggest that the qualities that w e would like to associate with a good B.A. graduate are indeed the qualities needed in the world ahead o f us.A B.A. graduate is uniquely positioned to accept the challenge and to engage with it creatively.The people w ho are going to be m akers and creators and survivors in the decades ahead are going to have open minds, to be critical thinking, are going, in the specific South African situation, to have a real sense o f history, o f cultural and social understanding and perspective, and are going, in the final analysis, to have a real sense o f vision based on understanding and accep tance o f the world and the forces operative in it.

. The university and the Baccalaureus Artium
Bobby Godsell (o f Anglo-American), at a seminar on the employability o f B.A. graduates held at the HSRC's Centre for Science Development on 18 and 19 February 1993, referred to 'the university' in its present guise as a feudal insti tution.He did not mean by this that the university as a system has lost its relevance, but that the university has a special task, which is to provide creative education to students in order to equip them to be able to face the hazardous (in every sense o f the word) world in which we live.He stressed that no degree in itself offered a guarantee o f employment -a degree (and in this instance then the B.A. degree) simply offers one a basis on which to build for life (but more about this later).Students attending a university are indeed highly privileged, because at a university one can share in the true community o f the intellect, a privilege not available to many.
In his important social critique o f America, Allan Bloom states, tow ards the end o f the book The Closing o f the Am erican M ind, that "Our problems are so great and their sources so deep that to understand them w e need philosophy more than ever" (1987:382), and he states unequivocally that Human nature, it seems, remains the same in our very altered circum stances, because we still face the same problems, if in different guises, and have the distinctly human need to solve them, even though our awareness and forces have become enfeebled (1987:380).
It is my unshakeable conviction that a good B.A. graduate will be able to help solve the kind o f fundamental and pervasive problems referred to above.I firmly believe, also, that it is precisely through what one learns as part o f the B.A. that one's aw areness and forces will gain new vigour, and one will be able to shake off the enfeeblement Bloom warns about.In a world in which the natural sciences have becom e the acme o f aspiration, and in which people tend to regard only the natural sciences as important or capable o f problem-solving, the humanities have paradoxically (inevitably?)become more indispensable than ever.Two o f the most powerful fields in contemporary natural scientific endeavour are biotech nology and micro-electronics, or computerization.The former has such frighte ning potential that urgent questions about ethical considerations are being asked, while the latter, the increasing insistence on com puterization, has the most shat tering potential for dehumanization that the world has known.Surely it goes without saying that fields such as these need the philosophical, ethical and psychological underpinnings to be offered by the humanities, to say nothing o f the communication skills that are a concomitant o f them.In the quotation above certain assumptions are made about the humanities, and the most important o f these is the fact that the humanities do research on and give expression to what it means to be human in the most profound sense o f the word -and some ways o f doing this are given.
The centrally important issue in education in the humanities is that the first and crucial concern is that this training is a developmental process and not merely a m atter o f mastering factual content.The good humanities scholar develops key skills which make a different person o f him or her.The key skills include openness o f mind, an ability to think logically and analytically, an ability to think laterally and creatively, an ability to interpret and synthesize and above all good communication skills.These enable the humanities scholar to turn learning into a lifelong process o f creative engagement with reality, to make o f learning an essentially holistic activity.These key skills, which m ake up the core o f a good B.A., enable the student o f the humanities to cope with a world in which new know ledge accumulates at a breathtaking pace (and existing know ledge becomes redundant as quickly), to integrate whole new systems o f knowledge, because the m odus operandi for doing this has becom e part o f the intellectual equipment o f the person, because the right kind o f mindset has been developed.The stress is therefore almost entirely on the process and not on the product o f learning or course content.John Cartwright o f the University Cape Town maintains that the different languages or discourses o f the world (and there are as many languages or discourses as there are fields o f human endeavour) can be understood and manipulated by a good training in the humanities, so that a student will be em powered for the rest o f his life to be part o f the world at a level o f creative engagement with reality -this once again underlines that this kind training deals with the how, and not as in many 'content' courses, the what.
Education in the humanities depends centrally on argum ent -and not argument simply about 'facts' but about the framework o f assumptions itself which directs us and regard one set o f possibilities as facts, some as probable, and others not (Cartwright, 1993:4).

Em ployability
At the seminar on the employability o f B.A. graduates referred to above, Bobby Godsell o f Anglo-American made the crucially important remark that people's aspirations about the job market are shaped by perceptions o f feudal professions -the idea that there is a whole neat little row o f jo bs and that people will, on completion o f a particular course o f study, slot neatly into one o f these.Nothing could be further from the truth, especially in view o f the historical juncture at which we find ourselves.It is perhaps on the one hand daunting and on the other hand challenging to remember that most o f the job s which will exist by the end of the twentieth century have not been invented yet -Godsell makes the point most emphatically that education is a matter o f how to learn (not primarily what to learn), and working is a matter o f how to do, not primarily what to do.In a paper by Colin G ardner o f Natal University the positive challenge o f this situation is underscored when he says that to see the world o f work as a m atter o f one person specifically trained for one job is cripplingly inadequate, philosophically, psychologically and politically, because it presupposes a world that is both static and mechanistic, it implies that situations do not change and that human beings are at their most efficient when they have been moulded and programmed.The view leaves no space for human consciousness, self-awareness or creativity, the very qualities most prized in humanities graduates.In line with this, it is thus suggested by people in industry that B.A.'s are very valuable in the very sense that a good B.A. graduate is above all trainable and retrainable, and can move with change.This is borne out by the fact that many large companies appoint humanities graduates in important management positions precisely because they are capable o f thinking laterally, o f making creative interpretations and coming up with novel and innovative solutions.It is illuminating to see that Anglo-American's Clem Sunter, who has become known as Mr. Future Scenario, is a humanities graduate, with a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics.His scenario-building for the country rests on the premise that 'The future is not what it used to b e' -it used to be fairly stable and predictable, but in line with what I said at the beginning, it has steadily become less so, and it needs daring, innovation, perceptiveness and a fundamental understanding o f people and political, economic and social processes to be able to do this.In the future it is less and less going to be a matter o f the formal sector being able to absorb jo b seekers -the em phasis is going to be on finding and above all creating jobs -and while daunting, this is also exciting, stimulating and ultimately liberating.
In a research project undertaken by the Law Faculty o f Natal University (Pieter maritzburg) and which can be fruitfully applied to any field in the humanities, it was found that perceptions about what constituted certain jo b s could vary a great deal -ranging from students to lecturers to employers.In a questionnaire to students and potential employers, the employers w ere asked In a very brief résumé o f some o f the findings, it em erged that w here students chiefly rated things like knowledge o f the subject content, level o f motivation and apposite conduct very highly, the skills looked for by em ployers were more things like leadership and management skills, the ability to apply know ledge, commu nication skills, the acceptance o f high standards, and a realistic perception o f one's real place in the organization.
So where does this leave the B.A. graduate?
It has been suggested most emphatically that a jo b should not necessarily emanate from the main subject content o f a student's degree, but perhaps rather from the whole array o f perhaps even secondary skills that the student has acquired, and in this sense it has been stressed that a student who has come into contact with a wide range o f reading and skills is well-equipped for any task.Such a student will perhaps in addition to having studied languages for their com municative and generally formative value, also have studied information studies and com puter studies, with a view to making the optimal use o f his abilities.A student in any other field would do well to polish his or her communicative skills, and to be come involved in student activities too -employers stress that students who have been involved in organized student life and in committee work are highly regarded in that they have already shown their ability at some practical enterprise.
Prospective employers also strongly advise students to try to do vacation or parttime work -with the stress not necessarily on the kin d o f w ork, but the fact o f work, the proving to a potential employer that you are willing to get out there and do something.
Colin Gardner has summed this up in the following terms: "To be a really good employee (or employer) in transitional South Africa a person needs considerable stores o f understanding, tolerance, moral insight and imagi nation" (Gardner, 1993:5) -a view further strengthened by Cartwright (1993:5), when he says o f qualities like the above that they are applicable in a w ide variety o f w ork and career situations, and, "unlike the skills provided by specifically vo cational training, they do not go out o f date".

A responsible work ethic
Now we have outlined this mythical beast, the fully-rounded, creative-thinking, coping, communicating B.A. graduate.It would be a wonderful feeling to leave the University and be this creature that employers would give their eyeteeth for, but there is more to it, and that is the question o f pride and self-respect, because those are the qualities which would encase the skills above in the kind o f setting that would sell them.One has to develop this sense o f pride in one's w ork, one's sense o f responsibility -and have respect for the self and for others (in line with the love commandment).Employers do say that they would love having people with these skills to work for them, but the bottom line is that people then really have to produce, to do this.Skills that are claimed have to be dem onstrated in action, and honed to ever greater effectiveness, if not perfection.Our country, with its special kind o f agonies, needs all the humanities graduates that it can get, but nobody is going to queue up and implore you to come and work for them (there are far too many people out there clamouring to get in, anyway).The key lies in exploring possibilities, looking into every prospect, creatively engaging with opportunities, and grasping the future, making oneself indispensable in w hat ever circle o f work one finds.The message therefore is -go out and create work.The door is not locked, open it and enter into the exciting, real world out there.Do not allow the B.A. to stand for Blow All -it does mean a lot.Do not let it stand for Bad Attitude -demonstrate that the B.A. graduate is a hard worker, but more importantly a coper.Let it stand finally for Baccalaureus Artium, the choice that you opted for on coming to university, and be proud o f a qualification which engages with reality at the most immediate and also the most profound level.The humanities graduate is uniquely positioned to serve humanity and to fulfil his or her vocation within the larger scheme o f things.
Alvin Toffler (o f Future Shock fame) says that "a new Address delivered on occasion of the B.A. graduation ceremony of the Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education on 8 March 1993.
The humanities explore and express what it means to be hum an, and when we are considering what we need to know in order to act effectively, it is to Koers 58(2) 1993:119-125   our own peril if we ignore or devalue a whole range o f ways o f analysing, understanding and describing such actions.For a scientist or a business person to dismiss or devalue the humanities is as self-limiting -foolishly and unnecessarily self-limiting -as for a scholar in the humanities to disdain the operations o f natural science, or o f comm erce and industry(Cartwright, 1993:3).
* w hat qualities would be most desirable in potential articled clerks and other em ployees; and * w hat they really found in people they appointed, Koers 58(2) 1993:119-125 while students were asked * what they would regard as the most important qualities o f an em ployee; and * what qualities were really found in these students.