Journal of Student Affairs in Africa | Volume 10(2) 2022, 231-232 | 2307-6267 | DOI: 10.24085/jsaa.v10i2.4221   231

www.jsaa.ac.za
AFRICAN 
MINDS

Book review

Wealth, values, culture & education: Reviving the 
essentials for equality and sustainability by J. E. Torabian 
(2022). Switzerland: Springer Nature Publications.
Reviewed by Bryan Cunningham*

This new book is an important addition to Springer’s Diversity and Inclusion Research 
series. As Professor Robert Cowen observes in his foreword, it is not a book that is 
susceptible to easy categorisation on the basis of any one academic discipline or specialist 
focus: “its cultural and historical range is extraordinary”. It is also one that I can readily 
attest “will invite thought, dispute and disagreement”.

The author herself captures the essence and scope of her book by invoking such of 
its aspirations as “work[ing] for the betterment of the world”. She also writes that its aim 
“is to provoke ref lections – but not to propose definite responses”. In these regards, and 
by its overarching concern to evidence the enduring inequalities and illusions of late 
capitalism, her work is extremely successful.

Comprehensively referenced, structurally Wealth, Values, Culture and Education is 
divided into five major sections, each with arresting titles such as ‘The Capitalist Trojan 
Horse and its Tenets’ and ‘A Retour to Essentials: Reconstructing Wealth and Values’. 
As an educationalist, the chapter on ‘Education and Culture’ held special interest for me.

A number of key questions, and of apparently contradictory perspectives, are being 
addressed in this chapter. Is the present function of education fundamentally about 
producing “human outputs” with relevant, employment-ready skills? Is there scope 
for education to encompass an emancipatory dimension, “equip[ping] learners with 
philosophies of being and doing”? Ranging across incredibly diverse geographical, 
political and cultural contexts (this range in fact being a feature of each of the book’s 
chapters) the author reviews a selection of theoretical and philosophical constructs 
that may serve to aid our understanding of how and why immense differences in 
educational principles and practices exist across the globe. Prevailing inequalities and 
authoritarianism loom large in Torabian’s analysis.

I was caused to ponder, not for the first time, how, in highly developed countries such 
as the UK and France, one particularly striking phenomenon is the very large proportion 
of successive school leaver cohorts progressing to higher level study (despite what many 
would acknowledge to be the significant opportunity costs of doing so). While much 
space could be devoted to an interrogation of this trend, there are two drivers that 

*  Bryan Cunningham is emeritus associate professor of Education at the University College London 
Institute of Education. Email: bryancunningham1951@gmail.com.

http://www.jsaa.ac.za
mailto:bryancunningham1951@gmail.com


232   Journal of Student Affairs in Africa | Volume 10(2) 2022, 231-232 | 2307-6267 | DOI: 10.24085/jsaa.v10i2.4221

almost certainly ought to be cited. One is qualifications inf lation (or “credentialism”), 
whereby employers require in applicants an ever more impressive batch of certificates 
for any given occupational role. The other appears to derive from changing social norms 
– “going to uni” simply having become what so many of your friends are planning on. 
Universities themselves have also played a part in so dramatically raising participation 
levels; given that their funding base improves with every increase in student numbers, 
the pronounced monetisation of the higher education sector, with its growing numbers 
of marketing staff, is hardly surprising. 

While the above – now long established – trend might be celebrated as an unalloyed 
good, there are however certain emergent negatives. For example, individual students 
seeking the so-called ‘graduate premium’ (higher predicted lifetime earnings for degree 
holders than for those who lack one) could well be disappointed: it is observable that that 
not all degrees are held in particularly high esteem by employers, and that over and above 
this reality they will often tend to prefer those from more prestigious universities. The 
impact of this, both practically and emotionally may be felt in particular by individuals 
who have left university not having found their time there either life enhancing or 
horizon broadening – or simply much fun. The outcome such graduates may well come 
to experience could be a case of the “20 years of schoolin’ and they put you on the day shift” 
that Bob Dylan sang of back in 1965.

Witnessing first-hand the kind of realities I am brief ly alluding to here certainly 
underlines the imperative for those of us in education to purposefully engage with 
Torabian’s “Essentials for Equality and Sustainability”. In saying so, I am in an important 
sense really only echoing some of the sentiments expressed in the sixth, and much 
shorter, section of her work. Titled ‘The Road (not) Taken’ this comprises what we 
can perhaps encounter as her cri de coeur. She acknowledges that moving away from our 
present materialistic, instrumentalist, preoccupations and practices may entail what she 
terms “baby steps” on the road to “otherwise thinking”. In conceiving of a “revitalised 
role of education and culture”, her highly ambitious, never less than deeply ref lective, 
narrative offers the reader an astonishingly timely and stimulating basis for both 
individual and collective action.

How to cite: 
Cunningham, B. (2022). Review of Wealth, values, culture & education: Reviving the essentials for 

equality and sustainability by J. E. Torabian. Journal of Student Affairs in Africa, 10(2), 231-232. 
DOI: 10.24085/jsaa.v10i2.4221