Education is the best medicine for growing cases of ‘affluenza’

Governments must act to ensure that all education institutions, whether primary, secondary or tertiary, act in concert to create a fairer society, writes Michael Lambert

Ethan Couch fled to Mexico instead of facing trial in America. His case speaks to many issues in the global education system. Jose Rivera / AFP

Since the late 1990s the use of the relatively obscure word affluenza has grown markedly. This is of great concern, especially to those of us who work in education. So what is going on? And what is affluenza?

For those of you who do not know affluenza has been defined by John de Graaf and others in their book of the same name as “a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more”. In short it is the social sickness caused by consumerism and overconsumption.

The most recent high-profile case of the condition involved the wealthy US teenager Ethan Couch who killed four people while drunk driving in 2013. His psychologist managed to spare Couch any prison time by claiming that the boy suffered from affluenza. He argued that Couch should not be held responsible for his crime because he had been cosseted by his wealthy parents and deprived of any real moral compass.

The reason Ethan Couch has made the news again is because he recently fled to Mexico to escape trial now that he is an adult.

It is not just Ethan Couch who has been struck down by a nasty case of affluenza, however. To an extent we are all sufferers.

Dubai was recently voted the fifth most important city in the world for the ultra-rich and consumer spending is the lifeblood of the emirate. Without a permanent and steady expansion of consumption of the goods and services provided here then the economy will shrivel and wilt on the vine. The hundreds of villas under construction will lie empty and the enormous expatriate workforce will emigrate to pastures new. Dubai depends on us all spending and for the most part we are all quite happy to oblige.

What most of us do not know, however, is quite how much how many of us will need to consume in future simply to maintain the same of level of economic growth which has set Dubai on its current trajectory.

In fact, if an economy grows at 3 per cent a year – the rate at which the UAE economy grew last year and is expected to grow again in 2016 – then consumption will need to double every 24 years. This equates to a 16-fold increase in consumption over the course of a century. We will each need twice as many cars, twice as many clothes, twice as many houses and twice as many TVs in a quarter of a century as we do now. Either that or the population will need to double.

But it is not just Dubai that needs to maintain this level of growth, the same is true of Europe, the US and all the other developed countries of the world.

This level of consumption is clearly unsustainable. In fact if everyone on the planet consumed at the levels of the western world we would require several more planets worth of raw materials for everyone to enjoy the level of comfort we do. There would also be a complete absence of a cheap labour force to produce our consumable goods for next to nothing.

This is clearly worrying on several counts. Firstly, it does not take a genius to work out that we simply cannot sustain this level of growth in consumption if we hope for our children or our grandchildren to live in an ecologically-sustainable society in the future. We are quite simply stripping the Earth of all of it natural resources and it is profoundly irresponsible to assume that technology and innovation will find the solution as has been the case previously.

What should be of even greater concern to anyone who wishes to consider themselves a humane person, however, is the level of global inequality which our consumer lifestyle creates and upon which it depends. World Bank research from 2008 estimated that 1.4 billion people on our planet live on less than Dh4.6 a day.

In fact the pay differential which enables goods to be made cheaply and sold for a profit entirely depends on this huge level of inequality. By consuming to excess we are all tacitly approving of mass poverty for 20 per cent of the world’s population. This must be recognised as a particular challenge for those of us who are educators if we truly believe that education is the greatest force for social good on our planet.

To educate with real integrity and not just self-interest, our job is to maximise the life chances of every young person the world over and not simply our own. We must consider how through the education of our few students, we can contribute to the betterment of the many.

For this to happen, however, schools and universities and the governments which they serve must support the teaching of moral and social responsibility to our students with as much fervour as they pursue global league table rankings and standardised testing.

If one school acts in isolation to promote these things, they will leave their students exposed when the common currency remains examination results.

Instead, governments must act to ensure that all education institutions, whether primary, secondary or tertiary, act in concert to create a fairer society. Annual inspections should include a requirement to demonstrate education in sustainability and social responsibility. Examination results alone are not going save the planet – only a shared moral purpose will.

Michael Lambert is headmaster of Dubai College