Earlier this year, I learned about Jimmy Reid, the Glasgow trade union activist, and the speech he delivered on his inauguration as rector of Glasgow University in 1972.
When this speech was reprinted in the New York Times, it was described as “the greatest speech since President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address”.
This excerpt is still particularly relevant:
To unleash the latent potential of our people requires that we give them responsibility.
The untapped resources of the North Sea are as nothing compared to the untapped resources of our people. I am convinced that the great mass of our people go through life without even a glimmer of what they could have contributed to their fellow human beings.
This is a personal tragedy. It’s a social crime. The flowering of each individual’s personality and talents is the pre-condition for everyone’s development.
In this context education has a vital role to play. If automation and technology is accompanied as it must be with a full employment, then the leisure time available to man will be enormously increased.
If that is so, then our whole concept of education must change. The whole object must be to equip and educate people for life, not solely for work or a profession.
The creative use of leisure, in communion with and in service to our fellow human beings, can and must become an important element in self-fulfilment.
