CARLTON, Vic., Tuesday 19 March
The Education Paradox: Why have the most highly educated generation of Australians lost faith in democracy, public institutions and major causes?
Presented by the Hon. Dr Barry Jones AC, Professorial Fellow, The University of Melbourne
The current cohort of Australians is the most highly educated by far in the nation’s history – at least on paper – with about 6.5 million graduates. Why then is support for democracy as the best political system declining sharply? Why have Australians lost faith in our major institutions? Why has the level of community engagement in major policy collapsed? Why are our brightest and best disengaged from major causes? Why has the quality of political discourse, in and out of Parliament, fallen to historically low levels? Why the self-absorption, emphasis on the short term, preferencing feeling over evidence, emotion over rationality? Why the revival of tribalism, misogyny and racism, not just here but throughout the Western world? Why have so many universities opted to become trading corporations rather than shapers of Australia’s future?
‘Australian Exceptionalism’ is my coinage for a set of major issues that we ought to be addressing, and are not. Is our education system up to existential challenges? In a digital age are the primary modes of communication social media + memes, leading to group-think? What happened to values? Is every value quantifiable? Does creativity and experience have a dollar equivalent? With limited experience, how can students have exposure to the numinous and the highly complex? Time management – how can we expand our reach, without exhaustion?
WHEN & WHERE:
Time: 5.15pm – pre-lecture refreshments and registration, 6pm – lecture
Venue: Theatre Q230, Level 2, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, Kwong Lee Dow Building, 234 Queensberry St,
The University of Melbourne
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Please note that due to venue capacity, places are strictly limited at this event.
SOURCE: Jones, Barry. “The Education Paradox: Why have the most highly educated generation of Australians lost faith in democracy, public institutions and major causes?” Dean’s Lecture Series 2019, The University of Melbourne
See also: A challlenged democracy: wicked problems and political failures / Barry Jones, The Conversation, 3 April 2015.
Produced by the librarians at the Brotherhood of St Laurence in Melbourne, Australia
