Could we still be Living in 19th Century England

In the mid nineteenth century the author Charles Dickens was so appalled by the living conditions of the poor of England that he became a tireless campaigner for the improvement in living conditions, and especially the health and education of the children. There were many other people who joined the fight for the improvement of the working class children but Dickens had the added advantage that he had a ready audience for his writings in which he highlighted the many injustices he saw. Indeed he himself was sent off to work in a blacking factory as a child so he had first hand experience.

Would it surprise you to learn that over one hundred and fifty years later we have an identical situation playing out in our own country?

A few months ago I was listening to an interview with a woman who was asked by Rotary to tutor 2 Aboriginal teenagers who came from an isolated Aboriginal community. They traveled to the city to live with the woman who under took a 3 month course of intensive tutoring. On arrival they were graded at year one or two. After ten days they had progressed two years. By the time they left they were able to converse in English and to use public transport and read signs. Now it is not as if these teenagers had not gone to school. They had regularly attended a local school. The problem was that there were no teachers a the school, and the assistants had insufficient education themselves to actually teach the children. Once every few weeks a teacher would fly in to take a class or two but that was by and large infective.

When the interviewee was asked how many children she thought were in this situation I was astounded when she replied that in her estimation there were of the order of 20,000. This is the number of Aboriginal children who were unable to gain an education because there were no facilities available to them.

The other situation that reminded me of the plight of Aboriginal  children was that of the caste system in India. Again I was listening to an interview on the radio and the interviewee was saying that the caste system was not an impenetrable impediment but it was an often unsurmountable barrier to education.

It appears to me that there is only one reason that this situation exists. We have allowed it to exist. I was rather pleased that one of the outcomes from the 20/20 summit was the proposal for a national Aboriginal education scheme. However, I am yet to be convinced that the outdated principle of federalism will not once again allow the differing levels of government to blame each other and be the pathetic excuse for doing nothing to the detriment of us all.

If the Aboriginal  problem is to be addressed then it is absolutely necessary to raise the overall educational standard of the Aboriginal children. This will not be addressed by throwing money at the problem willy nilly, not by the federal/state blame fest which we have too often seen. It has to be a nationally coordinated scheme with the will and means to provide a universal education that is available to every other person in Australia, but denied to these people by neglect and disinterest on our part. This is going to cost in budgetary terms but the return will be inestimable.

Legal, ethical, expedient?

Or – Does the end justify the means?

One of the principles at the heart of our justice system is that the end does not justify the means. A persons actions are judged according to the law not according to some perceived hypothetical circumstance.

Once you start justifying your actions according to the ends then you are able to justify almost anything. This is the excuse for Guantanamo Bay and the Nazi human experiments for instance.

In this article which talked about the new laws relating to therapeutic cloning contained the following quote from Professor Tom Faunce.

“It’s really not acceptable that theoretical arguments, which have plagued this sort of debate, are inhibiting the development of research that will alleviate the suffering of these people.”

So what he is saying, and many other besides, is that the alleviation of suffering is sufficient justification for therapeutic cloning. This is the classic end justifies the means argument. So in effect he is saying that we have to look at the morality of an issue merely by assessing the outcomes rather than the actual process to reach that outcome. I need no tell you how this argument has been used by scientists in the past to justify many types of research that is now considered unethical. Was the argument against painful and in some instances lethal testing of animals a “theoretical argument”?

The process and the morality of the process needs to be discussed independent of the outcome and to suggest that the moral arguments are “theoretical” and not acceptable is hypocritical narrow and inconsistent.

In fact it is the scientists who are being emotive, theoretical and irrational in this discussion and the moralists are actually on the high ground. You cannot separate morality from science as has been proven many times before.

What we need is an open and intelligent debate on the morality, not confused by the irrelevant and emotive cloud that tends to hide the real issues.