I FELT that the assumptions made in the report on higher education figures ("Degree of success for Africans as white Scots least educated", The Herald, July 24) required a different view for the sake of completeness.
The report states: "New census figures show only 22 per cent of white people born in Scotland have a degree, fewer than any other ethnic group living in the country."
What I believe has to be borne in mind is that the retired parents, like myself, of the present Scottish generation of our working young in society, were the last generation to grow up in an industrialised Scotland. Sadly for us there was the trauma of also watching it become post-industrial. The culture of education had been one of appropriateness in that skilled people in industry did not usually require a university education. Most had instead gained qualifications pertinent to the field they were employed in, such as in a shipyard drawing office or a high-precision toolroom.
Such employees were part of our middle classes and represented the backbone of our society. The reference in the report to university graduates originally from certain parts of Africa and indeed some areas of the world which might be considered undeveloped, often have no history of a mature middle class system in our own sense. I suggest that people growing up in some such countries are often either very poor or relatively rich and they can only become better off by gaining a university education and having a career in the professions.
I feel your leader comment ("Qualified immigrants are just what Scotland needs", The Herald, July 24) that we now have young people waiting on tables having gained a university education illustrates that there is something fundamentally amiss in our view of the purpose of post-school learning. For reasons which remain unclear to me, there seems a presumption that in the modern world, education per se has to supplant useful training to be considered as having value in society.
Bill Brown,
46 Breadie Drive, Milngavie.
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