Salocin

The things we hold to ransom

I've never been a great fan of unions, as some previous articles have made clear. I think they have no need to look beyond the limiting borders of their own self-interest, and that given the power they accumulate through their membership, this makes them a threat to society and the economy.

I've tilted at a number of these windmills - I've aimed my criticism at farmers, truck drivers, car assembly plant workers and coal miners. I've never targeted individuals, but unions as entities with a collective purpose, which may represent the average of a membership's opinions without representing the majority - the truth is that most of the members of such unions don't understand the effect of their actions in the greater scheme of things, and their selfishness is explainable (if not justifiable) when one takes into account their context, and the fact that they have no comprehension of why their position is damaging to the greater social, political and economic environment upon which they depend.

Academics have no such excuse.

These are allegedly the intelligent, sophisticated individuals to whom we entrust the education of future generations of leaders, businessmen and thinkers. These are individuals who have all the intellectual and theoretical tools at their disposal to understand the impact of their actions in the greater scheme of things.

This is what makes it so completely reprehensible that they should be holding an entire generation's progress to ransom by refusing to mark exams, so as to increase their pay.

That they may be underpaid, or not, isn't the question I am addressing here - their cause may or may not be legitimate, but their method of protest is unacceptable - a throwback from a bygone era where brinkmanship among unions was reflected by the brinkmanship of the cold war. They chose this method of protest, and to claim they "had no choice" is disingenuous and self-serving at best.

Of course the National Union of Students, trapped by its own blinkered left-wing attitudes, has no idea what to do. They represent the interests of students, not teachers, and they find themselves in a position where their entire membership faces possibly the gravest threat to their future that the NUS has ever had to deal with - make no mistake, the current situation is unprecedented, both in terms of its details and its severity. But the NUS is so trapped by its socialist dogma that it can't grow the backbone necessary to turn around to the teaching unions and take the side it needs to in order to resolve this problem in a way that would help its own membership. It's trapped between its duty and its ideals.

To those who understand the importance of a continued flow of talent from the educational establishments to keep the economy ticking over, this is a disaster. An entire year of employees held back from beginning employment is going to have repercussions in many areas: Companies will be unable to find the talent necessary to continue training and succession planning programmes, pension calculations will be indirectly affected, advances in fields of research that we don't even know about yet will be set back by a year, and tens of thousands of students will have to spend the additional money (which they will have to borrow) in order to complete their year, sitting exams they will be poorly prepared for, and therefore not getting results representative of their potential.

That educators could conceive that such a course of action is even remotely acceptable calls into question not only the excessive power of their unions, but their suitability as the caretakers of the education of future leaders in the first place. Education is about more than the skills and earning potential bestowed by a qualification, it is also about the ethics, morals, social responsibilities and professionalism that come with positions of responsibility - the academics on strike are clearly the last people to whom such a subtle and important task should be entrusted.

Posted by nlvp at May 31, 2006 08:26 PM