Open Universities Open Uni-verse

This is a poem I felt inspired to write regarding the ethics of universities and their true purpose. I have found myself contemplating these questions on many occasions as we see the university becoming a channel for commercial needs. This is not to critique schools focussing on business management, accounting, IT etc. it is to question the true intent of universities as hubs of higher knowledge and the marginalisation of critical areas such as Philosophy, Arts, Music the very areas where creativity and new ideas spring from. The arts are often seen as soft subjects or what bring us pleasure rather than essential for the crafting of civilisation and vision. They are perceived as lesser in importance they are perceived as having little commercial value. They are not promoted as an important aspect of learning to question to become an advanced civilisation, mastering many of the disciplines and arts. The enlightenment favoured a mastery of a diverse range of disciplines to provide holistic vision, today we specialise so that the sum of the parts is unaware of the whole. Arts enables a vision of integration and holistic thinking/feeling as is exemplified by poetry. This poem was sent to a Vice Chancellor in a spirit of higher learning. I share this to all those who are seeking a higher path. Is our purpose to learn to work? or to work on higher learning that values human beings and their true poetential so that our civilisation survives. Is it to further sustainability, efficiency functionally and adaptability to the new challenges that are now present for us to choose.

OPENING TO NEW IDEAS

La university,
A library of ideas,
Housed in archives,
Referencing authority,
The Dewey Decimal system,
Classifies the library,
Yet free thinking sits in the Agora
pondering the trees
watching the leaves fall,
Unseasonally.

Profit and loss, balance sheets, Academic committees,
Learning the users pay of demand and supply,
To maximize places, optimally,
A revenue stream marketed, internationally,
Is the moat that flows in one direction,
Yet bridges across troubled waters
provide new perspectives not seen from rooms
without a view,
Tunnel vision is the specialist,
The channel is the visionary that is deepened,
For the university of ideas can be limited,
When unquestioned.

The intellectual ponders questions,
For these are the pathways leading away from the castle,
A remote sensing,
As infinite possibilities are unlimited,
When we are open to new ideas without walls.

What is the university?
I ponder,
A place of higher learning?
Not earnings to get a place,
It is a space of academic freedom,
The freedom to think,
Yet schools of thought carry us in one direction,
Competing schools sharpen the intellect,
As beliefs of humanity become challenged,
This is the higher learning of pre-texts,
Breakthroughs to excellence,
That brings the higher earnings by default,
For understanding is excellence shaping new world views,
Differentiation is a diverse leading edge,
That learns differently,
Innovation is creativity living outside the box,
Not established as bureaucratic structures,
But establishes as renewable junctures,
Understanding chaos appears erratic yet stable.

Undergraduates learn the structure of the box,
And recite from the platform,
A presentation of published theories,
For they have learned their lessons well,
And with cap and cloak they receive degrees,
Institutionally endorsed,
Internationally recognized,
Yet capping trade is the new currency
Of educational enlightenment,
That sustains the future of academic freedom.

Universitas emerged from medieval guilds,
Collective legal rights,
Guaranteed by princely charters,
As the traditional bearers of higher education,
The elite leaders a modus operandi,
Believed the earth was flat in theory,
Yet planet earth was a circle not a square.

The ancient centers of higher learning,
Stood apart from tradition,
The oldest universities in the world,
Philosophical and mystical inquirers,
Universities based on the ourboros,
The circle outside the square,
A cyclical learning of primordial unity,
Cycling in spirals of higher knowledge,
For awareness expands understanding,
As understanding expands awareness,
And this is the higher learning of all uni-verses,
The one song composed out of renewable dischords,
To find harmony is the objective of innovation,
As passion appears unbridled when seeking unity not status,
Scholarly freedom finds its renaissance,
In diversity outside of conformity,
And this is not radical but natural
when passion is leading us away from the edge.

So my friend I ponder …

Institutional awareness or stonewalling?
Intellectual freedom or conformity?
Vested interests or unity?
For this is the security that finds equilibrium,
Where economy serves community,
And passion opens to the new idea of freedom.