By Tumelo Modisane

Members of the Education and Training fraternity gathered together at the Wits School of Education on the 20th October for the first Ben Parker Memorial Lecture. Prof Ben Parker, who was the first Director of Research at the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA), passed away last year.

To commemorate the legacy of this extra-ordinary philosopher and educationalist, SAQA decided to host Ben Parker Memorial Lectures. This first Memorial Lecture captured the heart and spirit of a man of honour, character, conscience and humility. Above all it captured Prof Parker's sharp and complex mind, and his passion for education and training.

Paying tribute to him, the University of KwaZulu-Natal's Prof. Ken Harley stated that fundamental to an appreciation of Prof Parker's real contribution and legacy is his intellectual work in relation to social justice. Prof Harley further noted that in a society in which it is not easy to identify context-transcending ideas of truth, objectivity and universal agreement, attempts to actually bring about the ideally just society are fraught with tensions and contradictions. "How do we understand these tensions, and more importantly, what do we do about them?" he asked.

In response to this question, Prof Harley said that much of Prof Parker's work was about addressing these questions: "Disagreement need not mean disarray, he [Prof Parker] argued. Communities of practice can contain disagreements and contested decision-making provided there is a predisposition towards exploring 'tension-points', and being willing to examine these with intellectual rigour."

He added that the value Prof Parker placed on working with tension points and disagreements is one of the reasons for his notable success as a teacher: "He synthesised and made sense of seemingly wild and unconnected sets of ideas." Prof Harley also highlighted that Prof Parker believed in a socially inclusive and cohesive NQF.

Giving the First Ben Parker Memorial Lecture, Director-General of Higher Education and Training, Ms Mary Metcalfe noted that through his work, Prof Parker was seeking to contribute to credible, legitimate and organic processes to explore comparability as a meaningful basis for integration so that the NQF could indeed achieve the emancipatory roles all believe in.

"And this is for me where Ben's genius is so exciting," she said, "Ben was interested in exploring how vocational or work related knowledge could be expressed in a form which could be equated with the academic knowledge. He set up a range of research projects which all aimed at exploring how we understand expertise, how we could provide an analysis of vocational education that would put it on such a strong conceptual footing so that the debate about articulation could be opened up."

Ms Metcalfe stated that in her view this work that Prof Parker was engaged in has powerful implications for the work of the Department of Higher Education and Training. She added that they'd miss being able to engage Prof Parker on these ideas.

Prof Ben Parker was a highly respected teacher of (mainly) philosophy, education development, education, and ethics. Prof Parker worked at the universities of the Rhodes, Witwatersrand, Natal (Durban), Durban-Westville, Natal (Pietermaritzburg), UKZN and Fort Hare. He was Executive Dean of Education at the University of Fort Hare, and Professor of Ethics in the Unilever Ethics Centre at UKZN, and Professor and Head of the School of Education at the University of Natal (Pietermaritzburg). He worked for development NGOs, the Department of Education, a Further Education and Training (FET) College, as Senior Researcher for the Centre for Education Policy Development (CEPD), and Research Director for the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA).

He was a prolific writer. His many contributions to policy development include work for the National Education Policy Investigation (NEPI). In 1999 and 2000 as Director: Higher Education, Colleges, and Teacher Education Programmes in the national Department of Education, he played leading roles in the consolidation of teacher education into higher education, and development of the Norms and Standards for Teacher Education. He also played leading roles in 2001/02 in the Ministerial Study Team reviewing the implementation of the National Qualifications Framework (NQF), and in 2004/05 as Committee Chairperson responsible for the Report of the Ministerial Committee on Rural Education. He made significant contributions to the work of Umalusi (Council for Quality Assurance in General and Further Education and Training), the Council on Higher Education (CHE), the South African Council of Educators (SACE), the South African Institute for Distance Education (SAIDE), and the Presidency.

Ben Parker was committed to furthering the ends of social justice. Much of his work addressed tensions relating to attempts to bring about a just society. A much respected scholar, he harnessed his knowledge and skills to the furtherance of education, training, democracy, and development.