Realizing moral purpose

Abstract

I feel a strong affinity for Phil Hughes. He was the seventh child from a working-class family and the first in his extended family to get a university qualification, paving the way for future generations in his own family. My father was the seventh son, and he and my mother had seven boys of which I was the first. I too was the first in a new generation to receive a university education that again signalled a new generation of postsecondary education for generations to come. I have come to call education moral purpose realized because it literally opened a whole new world of ideas, global exposure and the capacity to help others. I had the honour in 2005 to deliver the Phillip Hughes Oration in Canberra in the presence of the man himself.