Philippine education in the ASEAN context
The Philippines is set to host next week, November 12, the 31st ASEAN Summit which also coincides with the 50th anniversary of the founding of the regional grouping.
Founded in 1967 by five countries, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, the regional bloc was initially a reaction against communist expansion in Vietnam and within its own borders.
From its founding tenets of cooperation, amity, and noninterference, ASEAN, which has since expanded to 10 memberstates, is now focused on economic integration and growth, and consensus-building -the latter being more challenging because of the interests and pressures involved particularly coming from superpowers China and the US.
According to the Summit's website, ASEAN is both the world's seventh-largest market and third-largest labor force. ASEAN has also been projected to become the fourth-largest economic bloc by 2030.
As a university teacher, the topic that interests me the most in the ASEAN meetings is education. This has been the talk lately among tertiary educators because of the so-called ASEANization.
Among colleagues in the University of the Philippines, talks have been centered on how the country's quality of education has slipped far behind its ASEAN neighbors over the years, without us actually noticing it.
It seems that the only remaining advantage we have now over ASEAN countries like Malaysia and Thailand is our facility of the English language. In the areas of science and technology, research, innovation and technical knowhow, we are barely catching up.
But this sense has not quite caught up with most educators and education officials in the country. Or perhaps we are glacially moving towards reforms, among them the implementation of the long-overdue K to 12 system.
Yet one of the symptoms that we have not quite appreciated the need to benchmark our educational system on external standards is our obsession with board topnotchers. We have overlooked the fact that the role of educational institutions is to promote national development, where knowledge is not only taught but also generated through relevant, grounded research.
To illustrate, a classmate of mine who used to work at our consulate in Thailand related to me how Thai scientists are developing ways to process and package milkfish or bangus into various food products. And to think that we used to educate the Thais in bangus production.
At the grocery store the other day I was appalled to see on the shelf canned coconut milk products made in Thailand. What? Are we lagging behind Thailand in a food industry that we are supposed to dominate? Even coconut juice in nicelypackaged boxes is imported from our neighboring countries. At this rate, we should be offering a PhD in bangus or coconut processing.
That reminds me of an incident 14 years ago during an agricultural conference in a neighboring island. A colleague of mine who had a PhD degree was designated as host-moderator of the conference. Naturally, he was introduced as "doctor soand-so". Imagine the disappointment of some of the farmers in the audience who later approached him for medical advice when they learned that he was not a medical doctor.
What I'm saying is that our people are hungry for knowledge and innovation that spell an immediate and direct impact on their lives. And on this aspect we can learn a lot from our ASEAN neighbors. Our historical arrogance as the only US-influenced educational system in Asia has long caught up with us.
Aside from setting our priorities right, we can start with increasing our public expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP where we lag behind Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Singapore, Indonesia, and yes, even Laos.