Speech by Dr Michael P. Mortell,
President, The National University of Ireland, Cork
At the Conferring of Arts Degrees and Diplomas
Thursday, 16 October, 1997
 
Education and Lifelong Learning

Today is a day to congratulate you on completing one stage of your education. While you were studying here, for three or four years, you applied yourselves to learning a language, studying a literature, to reading history, or to getting skilled in one of the social sciences.

It's also the right time to reflect, briefly, on what a university education means and how you can continue to build on what you have learned here in the years to come.

When you were in school, you learned what was passed on from your teachers. At that stage, there was not much room for you to dispute the received wisdom - you had to master irregular verbs, learn the basic facts of the history of a given period, or begin to understand scientific theories. In Newton's famous phrase, we all "stood on the shoulders of giants." That provided a secure foundation for learning.

At university, things should be a bit different. Of course there is still a fair amount of learning to be done, learning material which is agreed or is so basic that you cannot make any progress without it. But already here you begin to see that we do not have all the answers, that there is more than one way of seeing things, and that we are much closer to the limits of our knowledge than you might ever have thought while in school.

Getting close to the limits of our knowledge is one thing. Seeing our individual disciplines in perspective is something else. There was a time, not very long ago, when the various subjects we work in were seen as discrete, purely rational enterprises, which could be developed indefinitely if we only had enough time, money and brains to match the task. This was a simplified ideal of the Enlightenment, and it was most strongly held in the context of scientific knowledge.

The American historian of science, Thomas Kuhn -- who died during the past year -- helped undermine that simple picture. His analysis [in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions] showed the extent to which our scientific achievements depend on a wider culture, and the extent to which what he called `values' are central to the development and success of scientific knowledge.

If this is true in chemistry or physics, it is even more the case in the social sciences and in the humanities in general. We not only stand on the shoulders of giants; we are embedded in a culture from within which we can ask the kinds of questions we ask, can formulate various answers, and push out the boundaries of human knowledge.

If we look to the future -- if you look forward to the kind of future that you can expect -- I think it's obvious that you have not finished learning. Apart from further formal education, or learning new skills for technologies which have not even been invented yet, there is a whole range of issues for which we do not have simple, agreed answers.

I mentioned a few minutes ago about school as mostly an experience of being taught, being taught things that are already known. But our life experience is likely to bring us face to face with many questions to which we do not have the answers.

In some cases, these arise simply from the fact that we are working at the limits of our current knowledge. In some cases, the unanswered questions arise because of new situations or events which have never occurred before, and we have to make up new solutions. But in others, the questions are unanswered because they are not the kinds of questions which have only one good answer.

I'm not trying to undermine the value of what you have learned during your years at UCC. You might think: "We've done all this study, and now you tell us that you don't have answers!" I hope that, during your years as a student here, you have acquired some of the skills needed for coping with the really difficult questions, such as: how to make sense of personal tragedy; why or how we should hold on to values when we see them publicly compromised; how to fashion political structures which might accommodate the diversity of religious and political views which are often evident within a given country or region.

In a word, the basic skills you learned here are the start of a life-long education. You can't stop now. The questions will arise, whether you like it or not. The real challenge is not to try to learn everything, which is impossible; or to turn to someone else, as a teacher, every time we have a question. As I formally launch you out onto this rather choppy and unpredictable sea, you have skills which should help you through. And the basic skill is the kind of inquisitive, reflective attitude, which is informed by tradition or culture, and is the mark of an educated man or woman.

The formal education of university is the prelude to a life-long journey. As you embark on it today, I want to wish you.....