At the moment, these concerns are still spreading in all directions, and that may illustrate the complex, complicated times in which we live. A time of transitions, as Jan Rotmans calls it, a time that calls for embracing the chaos. Because out of that chaos a new order will be able to emerge, one that gives us all breathing space, and guidance. An order that reinforces our courage to doubt, to use that beautiful concept of Désanne van Brederode. We can all use courage to doubt – the open, receptive attitude that testifies to the realization that you may be wrong. If each one of us had a little more of that, together we could transform our academic community into a rich educational space, in which everyone can learn.
We are all building that educational space together, but the more privileged, because of their relatively secure position, should take the lead in showing that they genuinely want to invest in their own courage to doubt. Maybe they got it wrong. Perhaps they simply can not understand how much their charming and courteous friendliness is being perceived as the reinforcement of a fundamentally unequal hierarchy. Let's not forget how unimaginably deep vertical thinking has penetrated into the fibers of our educational system. That starts in first grade, or maybe even before, if during preschool education some of us are already told that they are behind. This continues during primary school and reaches a climax in the advice for secondary education, because pre-vocational secundary education is lower than senior general secundary education and that is lower than pre-university education. This hierarchy continues in the unequal relationship between secundary vocational education, higher vocational education, and scientific/academic education.. And once you have finished your studies and start working in education, you are really confronted with that endless ladder that we euphemistically call our ‘job classification system’. The number of steps you can climb..., I really think it's out of date. Add scarcity, call science ‘top sport’ and you can already conclude: social safety will be hard to find and there will hardly be an educational space.
The epitome of a good educational space can be found in the formative actions of master and companion. But I hasten to note that if there really is an open and reciprocal feedback culture in that interaction, the masters will then immediately have to give their function a different – gender-neutral, but also horizontal name. They are not masters, but guides. They do not protect the guild, but are a more experienced colleague. They have been walking around campus for some time and that is precisely why it is quite possible that they see things wrong.
Let's show the courage to doubt and to tear down our job classification system, to actually make our campus an open field, where everyone stands on the same ground and where we can honestly look each other in the eye on the horizontal plane. That's what our education needs. That's what our students need. That's what our employees need. And that is what all those professors - who have given our centenary in De Vereeniging so much glory with hundreds at a time in venerable togas - need. We can do it. In five years, everyone will wear a toga!