Glasnost

Most of my posts to-date have focused on blogging and teaching. This post takes a very different direction; it’s the potatoes to add a little variety to my overly meat-rich diet.

The United World College movement has just turned 50. The power and pervasiveness of Kurt Hahn’s original vision constantly surprises me as it finds expression in unexpected places. One recent voice to contribute to this conversation is Mikhail Gorbachev, a figure who, in my mind, stands in significance with the likes of fellow Nobel Prize winner Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Ghandi for the positive impact he has made on 20^th Century politics. It is thus humbling and surprising to find Gorbachev taking the time to address the UWC community directly.

In his letter to the UWC movement, Gorbachev writes:

Dear friends,

Please accept my congratulations on the

occasion of the 50th anniversary of United

World Colleges. During the years of its existence

your movement has been able to considerably

influence several generations of students from

many countries in a spirit of mutual respect,

peace and sustainable development. Today, this

mission is as important as ever.

In today’s world, old threats to peace are

persisting and new ones are emerging.

The current economic crisis, the crisis of

international relations and the threat of a new

http://www.flickr.com/photos/osipovva/5498928857

arms race testify to the fact that the twenty

years after the end of the Cold War have been

largely wasted instead of being used to build a

more secure and just world order.

The economy of many countries is in deep

crisis. One of the causes of this crisis is the

model that has defined global development for

the past few decades, a model based on seeking

superprofits and overconsumption, on social and

environmental irresponsibility, making the

human being merely a cog in an economic machine.

I am convinced that a transition to a new model

is inevitable. But this requires joint efforts of the

scientific and academic community. I therefore

applaud the vigorous efforts of your movement

to support the right to peace, social justice

and sustainable development and stand up

against injustice and inequality. It is particularly

important that your students and alumni take

this stand not merely in rhetoric but by working

actively in various humanitarian, educational

and environmental projects on all continents,

thus showing an example of engagement and

civic responsibility.

I find this letter sobering. The last twenty years, he tells us, ‘have been largely wasted’. We have not build a ‘more secure and just world’ but instead have focussed on ‘superprofits and overconsumption, on social and environmental irresponsibility, making the human being merely a cog in an economic machine.’

As I sit here in Singapore, an employee of UWCSEA, it is hard not to take this analysis to heart. This is a wealthy country where Mercedes and BMWs are big, black and ubiquitous. There seems sometimes to be something a little inadequate in a lunchtime bake-sale which raises a few hundred dollars for a worthy cause when each of us live a lifestyle built, literally, on the cheap labour of imported workers.

What Gorbachev reminds me is that my footprint on the earth is real and I must always look carefully to see where I am treading. The UWC mission walks a precarious line as we both rely on the ‘economic machine’ for the resources that allow us to exist and simultaneously explore and question its workings. The social responsibility one has in a position of privilege requires significant and difficult reflection.

Gorbachev himself provides a good lesson in the value of working carefully from within ‘the machine’. His reform agenda for the Soviet Union through “perestroika” resulted in the dissolution of the USSR and the birth of modern Europe. The central tenant of that movement was the notion of “glasnost”, or “openness”, and it is this idea that I think has particular resonance with the UWC movement. Kurt Hahn’s belief was that if you could put people from different cultures together and educate them as equals, they would emerge from their schools with a greater potential to create a just and peaceful world. I think he would have liked the idea of glasnost.