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Chapter Eight - Dedication to the Common Weal
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101 Genuine Intellectuals: Academic and Social Responsibilities of Universities in Africa Chapter Eight Dedication To The Common Weal I said at the start of the last chapter that, whereas the end of an action or enterprise is the natural, inevitable objective outcome that issues from the said action or enterprise, the purpose, on the other hand, is the subjective intention that the doer has in mind in doing what he does; the end should be invariable, constant; the purpose for the most part is various, differing from person to person. When I first went to University, as I have said already, I noticed that most of the boys and girls I met there had for their foremost purpose to snatch a degree and get a job, as soon as possible, thereafter. By and large, this is the prominent and prevalent intent almost everywhere, especially in the rising countries where a good and high education is one of the surest means of social and economic preferment. You see it in a country like ours where the French mentality has given rise to a veritable cult of degrees; a green-horn returning from a University or from an Haute Ecole in France with titles fit to fill half a page, nourishes the ambition, before he has hardly taken his seat behind a desk, to be nominated directeur of this or chef de service of that; and will lobby and even intrigue to achieve this end; and become disgruntled and bitter if he fails in his bid. Prove their worth first, by a competent, skilful, conscientious and impressive prolonged performance of a task – few give a thought to that. Merely because they are armed with a string of degrees, they would feel insulted if anyone dared to 102 Bernard Nsokika Fonlon suggest that that is not enough; that they need, into the bargain, to acquire expertise and experience and vindicate their worth and impose themselves by a few years of diligent, competent exercise, and by acquiring the knack of handling men and the skilful ability to govern and to guide. In like manner most parents with a son in University look upon his presence there, purely and simply, as a financial investment which should begin to bring in dividends as soon as the student leaves the campus and gets a job. Furthermore, in present-day Africa, when politicians lay the foundationstone of a new university, at the lowest, they have an eye on the next elections, on consolidating themselves in office thereby; at best, they are anxious to furnish the services of the State with a corps of expert personnel, or, to use a muchworn expression in French-speaking Africa, they are intent on furthering la formation de cadres. These are some of the current reasons why young men and women seek university education, why parents, if they can, stint themselves to keep a son on the campus, why governments, especially in the new countries, set up universities. There is nothing wrong with these reasons; yet, they are low, self-centred, circumscribed and fall short of the ideal What then should be the lofty, large and selfless purpose that educators should have ever in mind in imparting university learning? Obviously, the End of University Studies, of which I have spoken so much above, that is, the formation of men armed with deep systematised knowledge in a specific field, men equipped, consequently, with a scientific and philosophical bent of mind, that is, the production of the genuine thinker-scholar, the scientist-philosopher, in short, the production of the authentic intellectual, should constitute, in itself, and at once, a primary purpose of university education. [54.159.186.146] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 23:20 GMT) 103 Genuine Intellectuals: Academic and Social Responsibilities of Universities in Africa Yet the intellectual, thus conceived and fashioned, however brilliant, however skilful, however profound in science and scholarship, does not constitute an end in himself; you do not produce him merely for the pleasure of producing him, to set him up (for popular worship) like a golden calf in the wilderness of ignorance and mediocrity. The pertinent question is: what should he do with his learning and skill and mind; to what use should he put his specialised knowledge, his scientific and philosophical training? In other words, what should be the ultimate purpose for providing a given community, or society at large, with the university trained man – the scientist, the technologist, the thinkerscholar , the genuine intellectual? I have pondered...