I mentioned earlier how I took to the debating platform on Wednesday for the first time in about 20 years.

I was on the negative team for the topic: Learning today is more important than it was in the past.

Here is my prepared speech, although I deviated from it to include rebuttals and had to cut some as well to finish within five minutes.

Learning today is more important than it was in the past: tell that one to St Hildegard of Bingen. For those who don’t know, she was a distinguished abbess in Germany in the 1100s, one of the few women of her era to have a formal education. She is credited with being the first person in the western world to write about the importance of boiling water for sanitation.

The notion that past learning is less important than today is frankly quite ridiculous, as my learned colleague Jenny articulated.

Where would we be today without the wheel, the clock, the motor vehicle or the mobile phone? These devices were developed by people in the past who invested time and effort in learning.

Looking at my own industry, if Gutenberg and Caxton had not commercialised the printing press the newspaper would not exist.

The notion put forward by our arguably unlearned opponents is, in fact, so ridiculous I will call on some famous quotes to highlight their absurdity:

Connor Cruise O’Brien said:
Education has been described as a lighthouse in the middle of a desert: Brilliant but useless.

Oscar Wilde said education is a process which makes one criminal cleverer than another.

That’s very true if you look at the global economic crisis confronting us today.

My point in raising these quotes is to differentiate learning from formal education, which has always had a reputation for elitism from the days of Aristotle through to the modern era.

The education of the debaters here today is worth mentioning. Of the six people we have two PhDs, a masters degree, two-full time university students and one high school graduate from Catholic Regional College in Traralgon.

Having heard two poorly constructed arguments I’m convinced that my learning is no less worthy than the people opposite who are formally more educated than I am.

In my ancient era, journalists were trained through a cadetship system. Nurses were also trained on the job, as I fondly recall from visits long ago to nurses homes. That was in the past and it’s a brave or foolish person who says journalists or nurses from that era are less learned than those of today.

While we may joke about education we are fortunate to be in a free society where views can be openly exchanged.

I challenge our friends on the other side to examine the issue of modern Zimbabwe. Under its president Robert Mugabe, a former teacher, 72 percent of young people achieved their O levels in the late 1990s. That’s the equivalent of Year 11 and was the highest rate in Africa. Those educated people are running the country into ruin today.

The Times of London reported last week: The Government of Zimbabwe has cancelled the 2008 school year. “The class of 2008 will not receive an education,” The Times reported.

The government has cancelled the school year to avoid humiliation.

Learning is not much good if you can’t eat. And that’s true today in Zimbabwe, which has the highest education levels in Africa.

Mr chairman, it is not our task to prove that learning is important or otherwise, simply to convince you and the audience that learning today is no more important than it was in the past.

We have argued that case on two fronts.

1. As Jenny opened and I continued, past learning laid the foundations for today. And
2. Higher rates of formal education do not translate into a better society.

Learning is more than just school or university. Learning is formal and informal. It’s a lifelong experience. It was important, is important and always will be important.