A Fresh Pattern of Higher EducationDr. I. MichaelTwo years ago, at the informal opening of theUniversity of Malawi, one of our guests wasWalter Adams, and a short time afterwards ourfirst public lecture was given by Professor Craig,I am delighted to be here again and to be giventhis opportunity to reciprocate, in a small way, thegoodwill from which we benefited so much inthose far-off days. Our two universities are, ofcourse, neighbours; but what is of much greatersignificance is our membership of that com-munity of scholars which is world-wide in extentand eight hundred years old in time. Good relationsbetween our two institutions mean a great deal inimmediate human terms, but the fundamentalsupport we can give to each other is more power-fully derived from the traditions of the Universitiesof Paris, Oxford, Salamanca, Wisconsin, Coimbra,St. Andrews, Cape Town, Allahabad, Birming-ham, Bonn, and nine hundred and ninety others.The University of Malawi has one distinctive,and, I believe, unique, feature: it is responsible forall the post-secondary full-time education of thecountry. It is composed of five colleges offeringthree-year courses, from School Certificate, lead-ing to a diploma, and four or five year coursesleading to an ordinary degree. All these coursesare under the academic authority of Senate; allthe students on them are university students; allthe staff appointed to teach these courses areuniversity staff; the degrees and diplomas areawarded by the university. All the students, attheir own request, have gowns, which they seldomwear, At the moment there are 465 students ondiploma courses, 250 on degree courses, 5 on apost-graduate diploma course, and 2 researchstudents. What can one make of an institution,however young, which claims to be a universitywhen less than a half of its students are workingon degree courses? Is such an institution wise?Is it honest? Is itŠand this is an even more dis-turbing questionŠis it respectable?We have taken the view that what is of funda-mental importance is not the level of work so muchas the standard. We hope that our students will bescholars in the sense that they should have a life-long questioning interest in ideas; that they shouldhave analytical skill but should be aware also of thelimitations of purely intellectual processes; thatthey should have imagination, ingenuity, inven-tiveness, insight, hunch, flair and dash. And so on,through the scholarly virtues. This is not to say, ofcourse, that they can dispense with knowledge.But one of our biggest questions is: what level ofknowledge and skill is needed by Malawi at thisstage of its development? Let me run the risk ofhorrifying you by saying that we have embracedthe younger sister of utilitarianism. The nature ofthe relationship, and the warmth of the embrace,may be illustrated by an experience of my own.Many years ago I was seeing home a girl of verygood judgment. We stood outside her front door,in a porch darkened by wistaria and patchilyilluminated by a young moon. "Darling", I said toher, "you look lovely". I then added, with academiccaution, the words ".., in this light". It is perhapsunnecessary to add that at this time 1 had not metmy wife. I must admit that to embrace utilitarianism,even cautiously, sometimes makes the pulse beatfaster with apprehension. A few days ago I readin the draft syllabus for one of our diploma coursesthe following:Introduction to slaughter houses and slaughterpractice, and full-time meat inspection practiceis provided at the Cold Storage Commissionabattoir under arrangements made with the(government) Department of Veterinary Services.Well? is public hygiene important in a poor over-crowded tropical community? Is the wise enforce-ment of regulations to promote public hygiene animportant and skilled job? Does the education ofthose who will become inspectors, responsible forframing and enforcing appropriate regulationswisely, require an understanding of biological andsociological ideas? Should this education containpractical work and some first hand acquaintancewith conditions in the field?I turn to the syllabus for the B.Sc. Honourscourse in Agriculture of the University of Leeds,and I read:An introduction to the anatomy and physiologyof farm animals, including the practical applica-tions of physiological research; pathologicalprocesses in farm animals; the recognition ofhealth and a consideration of common diseaseand their control.The knowledge required for the constructiveinspection of meat is less than, but not essentiallydifferent from, the knowledge required for theconstructive consideration of pathological pro-cesses in farm animals.I turn, again, to the prospectus of the ResearchSchool of Physical Science in the National Univer-sity of Australia, Canberra:An electroprobe X-ray microanalyser has beeninstalled. An A.E.I, spark source mass spectro-graph is in use for studying trace elements.The knowledge required for interpreting thebehaviour of these splendid implements is, pre-sumably, hard to attain, but the range and import-ance of the relevant ideas is not necessarily greater,by strictly academic criteria, than the range ofideas relevant to a concern for the diseases ofbeef-cattle or for the promotion of public hygiene.But in case I seem to be proving too much, let mesay emphatically of the student of public healthinspection (as of the student of mass spectro-graphy) that unless he is pursuing Ideas he has noplace in a university.The University of Malawi is committed to beinguseful. I will not go over again the familiar man-power arguments; the danger of unemployed artsgraduates; the need for technicians rather thanengineers; the importance of the middle levels ofskilled manpower. These arguments are not inquestion. All we have done is to take the platitudesseriously, and to act on them in the belief that bybringing this level of education into the university,and by associating it with the standards of scholar-ship, its usefulness is increased. Where, you mayask, does this process stop?If you once grant that scholarly standards can beapplied at any educational level is there any reasonwhy the university should not take over the second-ary schools, the primary schools, the governmentitself? Is our policy not discredited by the argu-ment ad absurdum? No. In a rapidly developingcountry the work of the technicianŠin engineering,agriculture, accountancy, public health Š willchange so much during his lifetime that if hereceives only a highly specific training for what isneeded in 1969 he will be unable to see, far less tomeet, the greatly different needs of 1989Šwhen hestill has fifteen or twenty years of work ahead ofhim. It is agreed that the technician must beadaptable, imaginative, responsive to social andeconomic change, able to learn new knowledgeand acquire new skills. It is this concern foradaptability which distinguishes the education ofthe technician from the training of the artisan. Theformer is an honourable and difficult task for anyuniversity to perform; the latter is outside a univer-sity's scope, not because it is at a "lower" levelbut because the training of artisans is not primarilyconcerned with ideas. But, it may be argued, is notthe education of school children concerned withideas? Are we not committed by this argument tomaking the school a kind of university, or theuniversity a kind of school? To make schools morelike universities is an attractive thoughtŠdanger-ously attractive. However, the defining qualities ofa university include not only the pursuit of ideasbut also maturity of the individual and of theinstitution. One great difficulty which the seniorpupils in African secondary schools share withBritish Sixth Formers is that though they aremature as individuals they are members of anecessarily immature community. By including theeducation of technicians within the university weare not, therefore, drawing a line at a point markedonly by expediency. Malawi needs technicians ingreater numbers than it needs graduates; techni-cians need education of the same quality asgraduates; the university is trying to provide it. Itis far too soon to say yet how successful we arebeing. But unless we include the diploma coursesand their students fully and wholeheartedly intothe university we cannot possibly succeed. Thisis a new pattern of higher education.There are five colleges. Four of them were builtor planned by government and were legally incor-porated within the university on the first of Januarythis year. The fifth, Chancellor College, whichteaches only at degree level, was opened inOctober 1965 as a result of the government'sdecision to start a University. Bunda College ofAgriculture, two hundred miles north of Blantyre,runs a three-year diploma course in Agriculture,with an enrolment of 180 students, men and women,A small number of students will follow a five-yeardegree course in agriculture, the first three yearsof which will be at Chancellor and the last two atBunda. Bunda is not far from the governmentagricultural research station at Chitedze, and withtheir co-operation, we hope to develop a modestprogramme of research at Bunda. Soche Hill, inBlantyre, is a college of Education, with a threeyear course for intending secondary teachers,closely linked through the Professor of Educationwith the Education course followed by intendingteachers at Chancellor College. The presentenrolment at Soche Hill is 120, to be increased.The Polytechnic, in Blantyre, offers diplomacourses in Engineering, Business Studies, PublicHealth Inspection and, jointly with Soche HillCollege, Technical Teaching. The college alsoruns non-University courses (short, part-time orsandwich) for apprentices, clerks, typists, labora-tory technicians.The enrolment of university students in thePolytechnic is at present 260 and will soon rise toabout 350, The fourth college, just outside Blan-tyre, is the Institute of Public Administration, whichoffers a three-year diploma course and a one-yearpost-graduate course, in public administration.Next year it will also offer, to a restricted number ofstudents, a five-year degree course in Law, thefirst two years to be spent at Chancellor College,the last three at the Institute. The enrolment at theInstitute is at present 40, increasing to 60. Thepremises, and some of the staff, are temporarilyshared with the Staff Training College, a govern-ment institution which provides short courses forofficers of the central and local government.Chancellor College, at present in Blantyre, runsdegree courses in arts, social science and physicaland biological science. These are four yearcourses, with a fifth year to be added for honoursas we have the resources.In their first year students have to take foursubjects, one of which must be English and oneeither mathematics or a science. You will not, Ihope, take it as a pointed remark if 1 say that westudy Geography, and treat it as a science. In theirsecond year the degree students again take foursubjects; in the third their time is divided into fiveunits, distributed in various combinations amongtwo or three subjects. In the fourth year the time isdivided into four units distributed among three ortwo (and exceptionally one) subjects. The coursesare very much what you would expect; the twoprincipal novelties, in name, being a first yearcourse called "Development and Change", anda second year course required for all intendingteachers, in "Human Behaviour", This is a syn-thesis of certain aspects of Psychology, Sociology,and Philosophy, and may be continued by thosewho are not taking Education, during years threeand four. We have not yet introduced a degreecourse in which I am (quite seriously) particularlyinterestedŠ"Symbols". It seems an admirablyinterdisciplinary course, of real breadth and rigour.To study the symbolism of mathematics and ofnatural language, aesthetic symbolism in dramaand the arts, and symbolic behaviour in one's ownand in other cultures, would ensure a broad, ifperhaps protracted, education. One result of thespeed with which we have had to start is that wehave not been as adventurous in designing thecurriculum as we should have been. But curricu-lum reform is a profound and circular operation.The map of knowledge must first of all be redrawnand the concept of a subject thought out afresh inrelation to a particular educational purpose.Teachers must then be able to withdraw for someyears and study, co-operatively, the newly definedsubjects. The whole operation, for one university,might cost as much as an aeroplane.We are bold enough, as you probably know, toaward our own diplomas and degrees. The deci-sion to stand alone, although perhaps conceited,was taken purely on educational grounds. Butthere is a proper concern, amongst students,school pupils and the general public, that ourawards should be of a good standard. The onequestion I am always asked is, "How do we knowthat our degree is going to be worth having?"Part of our answer is in a system of academicconsultants. We ask academics with whom wehave some personal connection, or who areknown to have an interest in a situation such asours, to act as consultants for the different degreeand diploma courses. These consultants, fromestablished universities, see syllabuses from theearly stages of preparation, and help in the re-cruitment of staff; they are usually able to visit usby one means or another, and they meet studentsand staff, see our physical resources, and teach alittle if they are with us for long enough. We are atpresent discussing, prompted by our NorthAmerican staff, whether we need a full-scalesystem of external examiners as well as oursystem of consultants.Closely related to the teaching curriculum is thequestion of research. ! believe that, in principle,good teaching at university level requires (or, atthe least, is made better by) regular refreshmentfrom the teacher's own highly specialised work inthe subject which he is teaching. But there is agreat deai of hypocrisy concealed by the applica-tion of this principle. Some research is subsidisedseif-indulgence, and has no effect whatever on theteaching of either under-graduates or graduates.It continues because no one feels competent toquestion its value. It might seem, therefore, thatwe, in a country where every penny is urgentlyneeded in ten different places, should apply theprinciple of utility with particular strictness toresearch. So we should, and so we do. But utility,what is useful to Malawi, includes more thaneconomic development. Utilitarianism is notmaterialism. We teach philosophy as well asagriculture.Our principal research work at present is aninterdisciplinary study of a lakeŠLake ChilwaŠwhich is of present and potential economicimportance, for its fish, and of great ecologicalinterest, both human and biological. It containsan inhabited island on which there is an unusualamount of low-level radiation. The lake, which hasno outlet, also suffers from unexplained fluctua-tions in level, and from great salinity. This yearthere is so little water that fishing has stopped;last year an unknown quantity of fish, certainlymore than 10,000 tons, was taken from it. LakeChilwa raises questions of interest to the biologi-cal, social and physical scientists; the attempt toanswer the questions can be directly related tounder-graduate teaching; the answers are ofimmediate economic and social importance to thecountry. We hope to develop similar patterns ofinter-disciplinary research in the social sciences,and we do what we can to help individual researcheven in subjects of no immediate utility.One feature of the University of Malawi whichconsiderably differs from the customary Britishpattern is the structure of its academic organisa-tion. It is not possible for a university dependent onpublic funds to be a self-governing community,but this remains the ideal. Any institution gainsstrength from the widest possible participation ofits members in the development of its policy. Theuniversity is small, and will always be so. Wemock at its bureaucratic democracy, and it doesnot yet work very well, but I believe that it isImportant. Every full-time member of the academicstaff, from every college, is by right a member of atleast one Subject Board. The Subject Board iswhere the teaching of a particular subject, both atdegree and at diploma level, is discussed in detail.The thirty or so Subject Boards are divided intofive Group Boards: Arts; Social Science andAdministration; Natural Resources; Science;Technology. Every member of staff, through hismembership of a Subject Board, is by right amember of a Group Board. The Group Boardsdiscuss (particularly at this early stage) syllabusessent up by their constituent Subject Boards, andmatters referred to them by Senate, but they canalso (and this will become an increasingly import-ant part of their work) initiate discussion on anyaspect of university life. It is here that all membersof staff (if they wish to) may influence, as well asunderstand, university policy. Each Group Boardelects four members to Senate, which is com-posed, about equally, of elected and ex-offlciomembers, the latter being the professors and thefive principals of the colleges. The system is, ofcourse, encompassed by the usual earthworks:committees for this and that; and it will certainlyneed modification as we develop. At present thegreatest threat to it is the two hundred miles whichseparate the agricultural college from the others,and the structure was designed in the expectationthat we would have a telecommunication systemwhereby Group Boards and committees (but notSenate) might meet without having to travel;some members at Bunda, some in Zomba, somein Blantyre, The committee rooms will be fittedwith individual microphones and ear pieces, butnot with vision. We hope to have the systemworking within a year, and we look forward todeveloping new techniques of committee proce-dure, Our technical people hold out the hope thatit may be possible, by processes I do not under-stand, literally to galvanise if not a whole commit-tee, at least some of its more ironic members.I have tried so far to keep fairly well to the pathI was asked to follow: to give an impression of theUniversity of Malawi and of its midly experimentalcharacter. I would like now to touch on, morepersonally, three aspects of the university'sdevelopment: first, one particular circumstance(experienced by some of you here) which affectsthe very early growth of an institution, and itsimplications for administration and leadership;secondly, relations with government; thirdly, whatit means for a university to be an internationalinstitution and at the same time rooted in theculture and loyalties of a developing country inAfrica.Our University was born with speed. I arrived inMalawi in November 1964 and was told that teach-ing would start, at the latest, by September in thefollowing year. It did. But till then the situation wasodd. The Provisional Council had not yet beenformed; there was no other member of staff, admini-strative or academic; decisions had yet to be madeeven about the length and nature of the under-graduate courses. There were two fixed points.One was the recent report of an internationalcommission which had recommended that thehigher education of Malawi should be organisedas a university system with an O-level entry. Thesecond fixed point, and a very welcome one, wasthe secondary school which had been set asidefor the university's temporary quarters. In suchcircumstances it was inevitable that the formativeinfluences on the early development of the univer-sity should be highly personal; and they remainedhighly personal even when, as it soon did, helpcame and the number of persons increased tothree. Within two and a half years the situation hasentirely changed, There is a Provisional Council offifteen; there are five colleges, each with its ownprincipal; there is a staff of 130, a Senate of forty,fifteen committees, five Group BoardsŠeverythingexcept a pear tree. What now is the proper placeof the personal? Should the administrator befaceless? Never, Should administrative proceduresbe impersonal, but influenced by personal quali-ties exercised outside the administrative process?Dangerous. Should a Vice-Chancellor be only theperfect chairman, infinitely responsive to theinfluences which play on him and infinitely skilledin compromise? How dull!It is in part only an aspect of my own egotismwhich makes me think that this aspect of universityadministration is interesting and insufficientlyconsidered, What kind of authority should a Vice-Chancellor exercise? We have yet to frame ourstatutes, so there is no legal answer: and the legalanswer seldom refers to the real authority. Irecognise the primary authority of Senate inacademic matters: it is the very heart of our idealwish to be a self-governing community. But mypolitical masters, and the lay members of theUniversity Council, find the authority of Senatestrange. They have appointed me to run theUniversity; there must be, they say, a boss withfull authority. And this is true. Why then is Senatenot subject to my authority? The familiar answer isthat the distribution of real power within theuniversity rests on conventions of consent. Butthese conventions ordinarily lead to division (andsometimes hostility) between academic andadministrative staff. Could we not, as a newuniversity, free to shape ourselves, internally, aswe please, design a new set of conventions whichwould distribute administrative responsibility (ifnot chores) more widely over the whole com-munity?This is not the time at which to attempt answersto my own questions but I will suggest an out-rageous metaphor which may indicate the kind ofanswer I would hope for.An essential task for institutional leadership isthe reconciliation, in conceptual as well as inpractical terms, of those qualities which arenecessary for promoting the organisational as-pects of administrative efficiency with thosequalities which are necessary for promoting itshuman aspects. The organisational and thehuman, contrasted in this way, can be regarded ascorresponding to two aspects of reality. From onepoint of view reality (if I may use undefined short-hand) can be seen as an efficient organisationgoverned by impersonal laws whose effects can,in principle, be predicted. From another point ofview reality can be seen as an organisation whoseefficiency can be assessed only when its moral,personal, basis is understood. An essential taskfor philosophy is the reconciliation, in conceptualas well as in mystical terms, of physical and morallaw. The organisational and the human aspects ofleadership will be reconciled by the same process,though on a tiny scale, as that by which in time Ibelieve that it will become a demonstrable,scientific fact that it is "love which moves thesun and the other stars". Perfect efficiency isidentical with complete harmony.On my second specific topic, the relationsbetween the university and government, I can sayvery little in a short time; but the central fact of thesituation is clear, and I have not heard it analysedin these terms before. There are in Malawi, and inother newly independent countries, three groupsof people particularly involved in the developmentof the university: first, the politicians; second, thestudents; third, the university staff. For all thesegroups a new university is, and creates, an un-familiar situation, full of potential stress.The politicians have called the university intoexistence; they want it. They believe that a univer-sity is necessary for the social and materialdevelopment of the country; they believe that itcan express and promote a sense of nationalidentity. They are prepared to put into the univer-sity money which is needed also for projectswhich might bring them greater popularity in thecountry as a whole. The politicians want theuniversity which they have created, but they do notentirely know what it is that they have created.They do not know, naturally, which conditions areessential for the proper functioning of a universityand which are just expressions of European andAmerican cultural tradition; they do not know howto assess the relative importance of the differentsubjects which could be studied; they do not know(though they may have strong views about) thecharacteristic pricklinesses of academics and thecultural monsoons which determine the floweringof student attitudes. The politicians need help andadvice from the university (because no one elsecan give it) on how to make the best use of theirexpensive creation.The students, in the early days, are in evengreater need of help. They have frequently grotes-que illusions about their own status and about thehigh life led by students in other countries. Theyknow that they are an elite, but they do not knowhow far their present status is the product ofinborn talent, of money, of luck. Still less do theyreally know how far it can, or should be, main-tained after they leave the university. The studentsneed help in understanding what is expected ofthem; expected by the politicians, by the ordinarypeople; by the university staff. Most of all theyneed help in understanding what they shouldexpect of themselves.The third group, the university staff, are, atfirst, almost entirely foreigners. I use the worddeliberately, rather than "expatriates", because itsharshness is appropriate. There is about the term"expatriate" a tone of nostalgic sentimentality, ifnot outright hypocrisy, which is quite inappro-priate when applied to people employed in anindependent foreign country. We are well-paidhired men. If we don't give value for money we willbe sacked; if we don't like our jobs we will go.What country we come from is unimportant. Whatis important is that we are foreigners, and thatfact is important only because it makes us expen-sive, and at the same time limits our understandingof, and hence our usefulness to, the countrywhich employs us.This harsh description of the foreigner's properand fundamental role is not, of course, the wholepicture. One hopes that he also likes and respectsthe country he is working in; that he sees his workas service, but as service which is responsivealways to what the country says it wants: notnecessarily to what he thinks it ought to want. Ilabour this point because it is neglected, in spiteof its familiarity. The old colonialist attitudes(whatever they were: they were before my day) aredead; but the newly independent countries arenow exposed to what may be called, with Latincourtesy, "insensitive beneficence" or, withSaxon bluntness, "pig-headed dogoodery". If wethink of ourselves as foreigners rather than asexpatriates, we can give Malawi more honestservice.At the moment eleven per cent of the universitystaff are Malawians. The rest are foreigners. Wetoo need help in order to carry out our work.However varied our experience may be of univer-sities in other parts of the world, and in otherAfrican countries, it is the University of Malawiwe are helping to make, and this should be not aBritish university, nor an American one; not evenan African university (if there were such a thing),but a university which meets the present needs ofMalawi, and is capable of development by oursuccessors in the very different conditions of thenext few hundred years. Such a task requiressensitivity, humility, and judgment. We cannotpromise to respond to every expression of localopinion, because this might, unintentionally,weaken the essential nature of the university whichit is our primary task to establish. We must not bedoctrinaire about what a university is or should do,We have, nevertheless, to know what are theessential, defining qualities of a university. That isour task. From the country we need help in em-bodying these qualities in an acceptable andenduring institution. We, whose roots are not inthe country, must see that the university has roots.Among these three groups: the politicians, thestudents, and the university staff, there is a patternof mutual dependence. We have differenttasks. Weall have to learn. The foreign staff have to learnhow to teach in such a way that not only are theessential purposes of a university promoted but atthe same time the university is rooted in thecountry and becomes a principal means of achiev-ing national aspirations. The politicians have tolearn how to have, how to use, a university. Thestudents have to learn how to be students and howat the same time to be citizens.This network of mutual dependence is thecentral fact about relations between the universityand the government. We are still in the first stage,when the fact of this dependence is being under-stood and is influencing the picture each grouphas of the other. The next stage, in any country, isthe development of a mutual confidence which isstrong enough to contain, without mishap, thesilly things that students do, the stupid things thatacademics say, the strange things which politi-cians think. The bridge from the first stage to thesecond is always in need of repair: knowledge ofwhat other people are really like. We are trying tobring the politicians into the colleges so that theycan talk with staff and students; to take thestudents to Young Pioneer and CommunityDevelopment training centres so that they can seethe important work done by their non-academiccontemporaries; to encourage schemes of volun-tary service so that (amongst other purposes)staff and students are seen to be human andcapable of responding to basic human needs. Wehave also, thanks to foundation help, small sumsof money available to help foreign staff, especiallythose newly arrived, to travel further into thecountry than they might otherwise do, to visitschools of all kinds, and to see something of theland into which their students' roots are set.1 have used more than once this metaphor ofroots: my third specific topic. It is, I believe, of evengreater importance, and of even greater difficulty,than is commonly supposed. Up to a point theargument is familiar and readily accepted. At firstAfrican students had to go to the west for theirhigher education; they lived for several years inanother culture and were in danger of losing touchwith their own. Recently higher education hascome to almost all African countries and thestudents can now have their undergraduatecourses, at least, in their own countries. But thecurriculum is still almost entirely western and therisk of alienation is still great,It is suggested, by Sir Eric Ashby and others,that things ought not to have happened in thisway, and that even now curricula should beseverely changed in order to correspond moreclosely with African cultures and with the econo-mic needs of developing countries. We hope thatthe fresh pattern which higher education is takingin Malawi meets the last point, but our universityis not rooted in African culture, nor has anyonesuggested that it should be, or how it could be.The developing countries want the benefits oftechnological change, which is an expression ofwestern culture, and they want the educationwhich supports it. And they want it fast. How torelate western culture to local culture has neces-sarily been, and still remains, a largely unexaminedproblem, The burden of making adjustmentsbetween the two cultures has been carried byindividuals: by those who went outside thecountry for their higher education. There has beenno body within the country looking at the socialand educational implications of the rapid intro-duction of western culture. A university is just thebody which ought to be able to make such anexamination. But the university is itself a principalagent of westernisation; it has its own acuteproblems of adjustment.I hoped, when I came to Malawi, that perhaps wecould devise a structure of university organisationwhich was based on traditional deliberativepractices. But this could not have been done, evenif it had been an acceptable idea, by a group ofnewly arrived foreigners. Nevertheless, in so far asAfrican societies have skilled and complexpatterns of social organisationŠto that extent it isdesirable that an African university, as its localstaff become more influential, should be ready tolocalise not only its staff but also its structure.There may come a time when a commission fromthe University of Oxford visits the University ofMalawi to see whether still further improvementsmay not be made to the Hebdomadal Council in thelight of African experience.Our present preoccupation, in Malawi, is, in itssimplest terms, to find ways whereby a predomi-nantly foreign staff can help an entirely Africanstudent body, collectively and individually, to gainthe western culture they so passionately and(praise be) so critically, desire, without cutting offtheir roots into their own society. This is notachieved by traditional dancing; it is not primarilya matter of language. To help our students topreserve a particular relationship to their ownsocietyŠto make this a central aim of the univer-sity, is to recognise the fundamentally political,and therefore moral, nature of education.To say that all education is political is not to sayanything at all novel or at all obscure; but it is aview which can be misunderstood, dangerously.What I am saying is that all education is, to varyingdegrees, about man as a member of a community;and most education is conducted in communities.The quality of life in a primary school classroom,whether the teacher intends it or not, forms thepupils' attitudes to each other and predisposesthem towards certain patterns of behaviour withinthe class and within the school. It is thereforeunavoidably an education in the organisation of acommunity; it is therefore political; it is thereforemoral. The moment education ceases to be moralit can, and should, be carried out by machines.Among the moral principles which should beexpressed by the quality of life in a university isthere one, particularly, which will help our studentsto reconcile the two communities between whichthey live? I have been thinking, as some of you willhave guessed, of the French teacher of philosophy,Simone Weil, who died in 1943, and particularly ofher book L'EnracinementŠThe Need for Roots.Simone Weil would not have liked my talking abouta moral principle; her own language was morepragmatic, and it is a very practical discussion ofhers with which I want to finish. She is discussing"the needs of the human soul", and one of thequalities which she describes gives profound andunfashionable guidance of the kind I am seeking.These are Simone Weil's words:"Initiative and responsibility, to feel one is usefuland even indispensable, are vital needs of thehuman soul . .. For these needs to be satisfied itis necessary that a man should often have to takedecisions in matters great or small, affectinginterests that are distinct from his own, but inregard to which he feels a personal concern. Healso requires to be continually called upon tosupply fresh efforts. Finally he requires to be ableto encompass in thought the entire range ofactivity of the social organism to which he belongs,including branches in connexion with which hehas never to take a decision or offer any advice.For that, he must be made acquainted with it, beasked to interest himself in it, be brought to feel itsvalue, its utility and, where necessary, its great-ness, and be made fully aware of the part he playsin it."These are wise and good words. They are not arule of life. They are a starting point for the practi-cal organisation of a community which hasparticular needs at a particular stage of its growth:a community from which I bring the friendlygreetings due to a neighbour and the gesture ofrespect due to an olderŠa slightly older-institution.