Recovery must come from Within

By Kristina Manalo, ERC Blogger

“What I can’t seem to answer is, what can you buy from Greece that you can’t buy from anywhere else?”

Patrick raised the question to the group of five friends from Oxford, whilst we were enjoying our al fresco lunch set atop an Austrian hill in the Danube valley at Wachau. The orderly terraces of grape vines below were shimmering in the golden October sunshine, and it occurred to me that yes, even Greek wine, olives and feta cheese could be bought from elsewhere.

“The only thing you could do to help would be to go on a very long holiday in Greece.”

Patrick, from Zurich, moved me with his concern and search for answers. “How do Austrians feel about it in Vienna?” Patrick posed the question to Gottfried, a native Viennese.

Gottfried eluded the question entirely by asking a different one. “So Patrick, can you help us to understand what is happening with the Swiss exchange rate?”

My mind was drifting to other elements of the Greek crisis, and the travesty of it all. I hold a strong view that mistakes are inevitable and even necessary, so long as we as individuals and indeed as communities and nations know that we can work through the outcomes by engaging our own resources. We cannot carry on making (or not making) decisions, expecting that the community will provide support and resources when our decisions prove to be too short-sighted. I know this all too well, having been through the character-building process of re-building my life after a big mistake – and indeed more than once!

At that moment in Austria, against the backdrop of the very educated conversation set in an even more breathtaking landscape, my thoughts were elsewhere. Rescue must come from within, otherwise rescue comes at the cost of integrity.

Vocational vs Academic Education

Back in London, I attended two academic lectures with seemingly opposing themes. The first lecture, featuring a speaker from Microsoft Research in Cambridge, focused on the need to improve Information and Communication Technology (ICT) knowledge in public education in order to address the skills gap and to improve employment figures.

The second lecture, “Coming Full Circle: Educating the Generalist,” featured Professor AC Grayling’s view that to prioritise vocational and technical skills over social sciences and humanities would be a travesty to the future of education and society as a whole. Professor Grayling posited that it is the depth, breadth and compassion offered by academic subjects (such as literature, the classics, philosophy, and those subjects which offer us a greater understanding of humanity and ourselves) which gives hope to the 7 billion of us, and which ensures the quality of life for the 1000 months that most of us in Great Britain can expect to live (I reached my 500th month this past September).

If there’s one theme which strikes me about the recent benchmark of the global population reaching 7 billion this past October, it’s of the inequity in the distribution of knowledge, and of financial and human capital. Social capital, on the other hand, can be distributed far more quickly and readily than the other forms of capital. Its impact cannot be underestimated; it is through the mobilisation of social capital that dictators, gangs and missions to the moon have succeeded. The careful and strategic use of social capital will have to play a role in the Greek recovery from within.

As regards the ongoing debate about education versus apprenticeships / vocational training, the questions raised are, which approach will have the greatest impact on employment, multi-factor productivity and economic stimulus? Is the apprenticeship / vocational training approach too short-sighted? Of course I’ve no clear answers. What I do know is that, when I think back to Lebensbaumkreis am Himmel in Kahlenburg outside Vienna, where there is a beautiful outdoor amphitheatre in the hills overlooking Vienna, and where the Beethoven Eroica Symphony wafts through a circle of outdoor speakers amidst a stunning hilltop meadow; when I appreciate the investments I made to bring about this memorable moment, I look to tomorrow with a hopeful and joyful understanding that indeed, an education is what you’re left with when you’ve forgotten everything that you learned at university.