Good morning  and thank you for having me here. 
It’s a great honour.
I’d also like to say I’m not speaking in the capacity of Chancellor of Kingston University. Just me.
I'd like to talk about "The New Century: Education As  A Right For All.  Teaching As A Key Component of Democracy ".

I’m writing a memoir which will be published in the Spring. It’s called “A Parallel Life”, and I’ll tell you what the “parallel “ means:

I’m the eldest of 7 kids. 
My dad was a man who worked in a factory at night and my mother is what used to be called a “housewife”. 
They saw education as the way up for all of us, the way out of the ghetto-both literally and  the one that we might make in our own minds because of the circumstances around us- being black children in a racially segregated city-Chicago.

As soon as my father could afford it, he took us out of the local state school and put us in Catholic school, which gave us, in his mind, a better  education.
 And it was safer…there were no gangs, etc.

Because I had been in a state school, the nuns there decided that I should repeat the First Grade, and that was a great blow to me. 
I was a reader and writer and talker at a very young age, but that made no difference. An assumption was made about me because of where I came from, the circumstances  of my life, my parents’ education, etc.

Anyway, I became fascinated by the Holy Trinity -you know, the One God-In -Three. 

I told my nun that I understood it-how God could be one in three, but she told me that I didn’t.
 It was a Mystery.
I thought: “Well it’s like water-whether it’s  ice or liquid ,or vapour, it’s still water. “ 
But I had no one to tell that to.
Maths was one of my parallel lives .the one that ran along the one that everyone saw: the black girl who had no interest in numbers. Only in learning to cook; to be a wife and mother, to be in my place.

Flash forward 50 years later.
I had a play script to write and while I was doing that, I had my other eye on tv… on an Horizon Programme on the Reimann Hypothesis, a great mathematical a puzzle that huge minds had been trying to solely  for centuries.
When I saw that equation on the board…all those numbers…I didn’t understand them because I didn’t have the language of maths…but I understood what the mathematician was doing.
It was like I’d been in a desert for fifty years,
I started devouring popular maths books and reading up on maths. I was obsessed. I still am. A door had been re-opened that I had closed…and had been closed by others.
A year later the BBC asked me if I wanted to take part in a programme measuring intelligence. I  said sure, it would be fun.
 I was part of a group that included a child prodigy who had been composing and had been   performed since he was 4; a quantum physicist  descend from Bertram Russell; a chess master who could play three boards at once; a man who created IQ tests, and so forth..

We took two lots of tests for this programme: 1. The  conventional type of IQ test, the one that MENSA uses to determine IQ. On that I was ok-average.
The other tests was one of  the newest…not one that tests “emotional intelligence”-whatever that is- but one that  tests capacity, agility, potential…what you could  do if you had the chance…
Toward the end of that test, the programme makkers called me and the quantum physicist   to  one side. He said: “You two are on course to be the joint winners of this programme. You both –in the aggregate of both tests-scored the same.”

 I had the potential to be a mathematician, a theoretical mathematician, to spend my days with boards full of equations…that’s what I could have done and that’s who I could have been if someone had recognized that my fascination with triangles and my ability to recall number sequences and  relationships at will could be the an indication that I have a  mind  that could maybe hold a key to some of the big problems that humans have been asking  since the beginning of time.
The quantum physicist said to me: ” You should have  gone to MIT;Oxbridge; Cambridge; Stanford; the University of Chicago …” 
Yes, I should have.
But my parents, poor and did the best they could…their very best.  And my teachers did, too. I owe so much to teachers and to my parents. 
But in those days girls didn’t do maths , especially girls from small, local schools, and black kids didn’t do maths and working class kids didn’t do maths. 
So here I am today. And I’m happy. 
But I never forget that child that I was and still am inside… and by extension every child who has the capacity but not the opportunity.
I graduated from highschool,and paid my way through university-going to classes at night. I  later  moved to  NYC in the '80's,  and  devised a scheme using Shakespeare as a literacy tool, which I taught in state schools in Harlem , Brooklyn and the Lower East Side. I worked with kids who had been thrown away and believe me, I learned more about Shakespeare from them, then they learned from me.
I wanted to help extend  opportunity so when I moved to London,  I brought my Shakespeare  programme  with me…this is 1986 and worked in the public sector in Lambeth, Streatham, Brent.
The  genius I found with children considered “underachievers”  I found here, too. I brought “Othello” to a group of Somali refugees . They got it.
They knew viscerally  more  about the life of the Stranger: the fear within and without-than most scholars.

This story isn’t about me, it’s about extending opportunity, it’s about  waste, too
I survived. I found out-late in the day, but not too late-what my mind could do.
But I know from experience that there are minds out there going to waste because of various things-one –above all-is the educational system that assumes; assumes, assumes.
We can’t afford-in this 21st Century- in this age of the international citizen-hyphenate , a world in which young people  are global,a world in which social media-the digital world-are creating intelligences, expertises and agilities that we can only begin to fathom. …we cannot afford to  put young people in silos, boxes that   destroy not only their individual lives but  the life of the nation and of the world…of human potential itself.

No one in this digital age can make a judgement on who will survive and who won’t, who will thrive and who won’t,  who will drown and who will be saved….not even that genius Mr. Gove,  Mr. Willets, not  even they because they do not know, they do not know who will make a contribution and who won’t because we don’t yet have the tools to measure all of the  different kinds of intelligences that are being born and shaped right now in this age as profoundly revolutionary as the Guttenberg Age over 500 years ago when the printing press enabled ordinary people to read…to question and to change  the world.

We’re in a new age, an age in which the way you use the your mind will be as important as what you know.

Let me say this: I know this:   the teacher-pupil relationship will be the key component to unlocking this 21s century-hand-in-hand with what the French philosopher Michel Serre calls the new  digital generation-the Petite Poucette-the “litter thumbs” the generation of the thumbs…those who are accessing knowledge on touch screens…
What will guide them?
Who will guide them?

It will be those who know viscerally what  education…educare…is…the leading out of human potential.

Education  isn’t about a job…although getting a job is important, is key.
 It is not about literacy or numeracy…although we cannot thrive in a society unless we have these skills
It is  about shaping and sending out a human being into the world  fit for purpose…a human being who can think…who has no fear of trying to solve problems…who is creative at every level…and who can recognize that in others…who can stand on their own two feet and can help those who cannot not…a human being who understands that we are all only as strong  as  the weakest amongst us…who know that there is no such thing as a test…only a system built on a system from a system and that nothing can measure what you can be, what you are…

There is a very beautiful mathematical  proof  created by a guy who loved working on maths problems so much that he was happy to be locked up by the Nazis during the War because it gave him the opportunity to work on his proof .
It  says in a nutshell: no system can be both consistent and complete, in other words…if there is a system, there also exists a way to break that system.
These realities  the exist together .
This is why nothing in this life is fool-proof; set; absolute
This is the reason  knowledge is dynamic…why teaching is dynamic and no Education Secretary can take us back.
There is no back to go to. We have to understand and respond to the times we live in.

We have an obligation- an obligation to all those children and young people and adults who have within them Possibility.
We have an obligation to those who have gone before us, who have fought  and even died through all of  time to provide  an education  to all regardless of gender, creed, ability, age, financial circumstances.
We have an obligation to our vocation…yes, I use the word “vocation” because you sure don’t teach to get rich…it’s about a “calling”…the best of you know this and have allegiance to it
Never forget, never forget that this HAS to be a calling
Go back and pay homage,  to that moment, that feeling when you knew.,…you knew that this-teaching- was not only your job but your life
Let the public know that being in the public sector is about THEM and their kids…about the public …the “populous”…The People ….and we keep The People in mind-always.

We have an obligation to keep ourselves  cheerful, valiant, strong, hopeful,  and go forward…forward…
Face the fear, the anger, the rage, the hopelessness with vigour because there have been those who have gone before us and those who will come behind us.

Don’t give up. 
This present situation  is just another fork in the road and on the road to equality…. to justice…to freedom…freedom of the heart and the mind.
In my mind’s eye I always see  the child that I was…staring at that image of the Holy Trinity on the board, listening to my nun saying ; “This is the greatest mystery of all. This is what the Church says”…
and me saying inside of my 10 year old head: “No, no  it’s not. I understand it. “

Thank you all and have a great and productive day.
I’ll see you again.

Bonnie Greer OBE
Saturday 1 February, 2014