Dear Parliamentarians (in particular Christopher Pyne),
I write to you with no ideologically-rooted vitriol; no preference as to who runs this country, no list of answers to geopolitical questions that your usual undergrad purports to have, and no qualms with the logical process by which the government has arrived at the conclusion that universities ought deregulate.
My question is about priorities.
My family does alright. We've always lived 'comfortably', which is a word us bourgeoisie use to alleviate the guilt we feel deep down for having more than most, while simultaneously making a conscious effort to avoid sounding boastful or 'proud' of the random sets of circumstances that lead some to money, and others to struggle.
Mum managed to pay for my school fees to Sydney Grammar School by making sacrifices she I'm sure would've rather not made. But now, at age 23, I understand why she and my father did what they did, and I'd like to share with you a story which I hope paints a picture beyond budget estimates and ideology.
In Year 12 I asked both of my parents as we sat down to eat one evening why they sent me to a private school, considering that they both were working in, and felt indebted to, public health.
It seemed a little bit hypocritical that they'd complain about the 'tax evading scumbags' leaving public health for private health ignoring their civic professional duties, just to be able to make more money, yet have me educated largely amongst that class of Australian kids.
My Mum's response to my query was more cordial than my father's. Mum said that she'd lost faith in public education after one of my school years at Haberfield Public School was so grossly disturbed by strike after strike that I’d memorized the lines to a children’s film they had us watch over and over again instead of my times tables.
"You're not a social experiment" were her exact words. Dad simply said, "You've got to know your enemy". When previously I'd thought my father a crazy person, I'm starting to get the inkling that maybe this Penrith-raised pinko had a pretty reasonable point to make.
For it seems as though the deregulation of tertiary education is both a social experiment, AND another instrument of economic, educational, and by extension social division. Isn't this the opposite of what education should be about?
I feel as though I must ask you whether or not you're sure that you want to take the cut-throat business world's competitive psychology, egotistical and poorly considered illusions of self-reliance, and an inherently socially Darwinistic attitude towards privilege, into the tertiary education system?
With a solid education a young person can achieve ANYTHING. When I saw that my HECS debt was at 18,000, I was so close to giving up on soldiering through uni and was about to enrol in horticulture at TAFE, just so I could pump something vocational out and join the workforce as opposed to accruing more debt.
I am so grateful for having made the decision to stay at uni: this semester at USYD, we've read Plato's Republic, Kant's epistemology, Jonathan Franzen, Hobbes, Locke, Smith, the out of order list goes on…
But a growing proportion of our nation's youth are never going to have the opportunity to understand how and why the world is how it is. A growing number of young people are going to be priced out of having a solid education purely because, at some point in time, unbeknown to most, universities went from being economically viable institutions of social utility, to profit-motivated businesses.
While balding men propose balding opinions about how 'entitled' and 'narcissistic' and 'ignorant' the youth of today are, does the thought process extend to this apparent problem's cause? Did all Australian young people just wake up in simultaneity this time last year with an iPhone in one hand and a Centrelink application form in the other? No.
Rather, there has been a slow whittling away of opportunities for young people with a constant increase in the rhetoric around how much harder 'things used to be'. I'd like to refer you to the old Monty Python sketch, 'the Four Yorkshiremen'.
"Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick the road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked 24 four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife."
I guess my ultimate question to you is simple: Is deregulation, and the obvious hike in fees and pricing out of the market of a large amount of students, rooted in some idea of the importance of tough love? Or are there people in the Senate who genuinely believe (and might I refer you to another thing I learned at uni this semester – Hume on the fallibility of belief!) that deregulation is going to be as good for us as it is for you?
Because I don't want to be in a one-sided relationship with my government. I want to trust my government, and believe that it governs with the best interests of those inheriting our great nation at heart above all else.
Regards,
Joshua Dabelstein
You can sign the Get Up! Petition here.
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