“Intellectual
superiority” is how a business educator would explain why Juan
de la Cruz seems unperturbed that we’re economic laggards. Add our
parochial bias and impulse to look backward and we have a picture of
why we are where we are? The writer never for a moment assumed
otherwise; that indeed Juan de la Cruz was intellectually superior
than his neighbors – as he covered the region over the decade from
the 1980s–90s. Yet, the reality of how these countries were pushing
economic development was there for all to see. The airports the
writer was flying into were getting far superior than Manila’s. And
even the hotels were matching if not overtaking those in Makati. And
their overall infrastructure development was moving higher for us to
match. In sum, the GDPs of these neighbors were growing ahead of
ours. We have elevated poverty for a reason – e.g., we were either
sitting pretty or asleep at the switch?
The region’s face
ceased to be the writer’s daily reality when he moved to a global
role. But the thought that Juan de la Cruz is intellectually superior
would remain. In the intervening period, the writer saw how the rest
of the world was moving. And instead of reading about “critical and
reflective thinking,” for example, he was living in it. Global
competition is real and intense. And to allow competition the
upper hand could have disastrous consequences. Once it was just
corporate America that dreaded the word restructuring. Today
the whole world knows it intimately. And it was when the writer was
doing restructuring in different parts of the world that he was
introduced to that one imperative: to be forward-thinking –
there must be a way to preempt disasters! And it was precisely
what he shared with his Eastern European friends – as they were
gearing up for EU membership – and their receptivity encouraged him
to assist them.
“Critical and
reflective thinking is not a lost art after all. It has remained for
the more mature minds a process of thinking, questioning,
problem-solving and decision-making – an approach which borders
along the original idea of John Dewey. It examines things, events,
circumstances and topics. It reflects on issues and practices –
local, national, international. It asks not only what happened, but
why. As such, critical thinking should not just be relegated to the
background.” [Nilo E. Colinares, Ed.D; Educators Speak:
REFLECTIVE TEACHING, Manila Bulletin, 3rd Jun 2012.]
The
first and the simplest yet the strongest influence on the writer
about thinking (in a serious way outside the classroom) came
from a Filipino entrepreneur: “You must learn to be
inquisitive”! While the writer was then too inexperienced to
appreciate the wisdom of the Filipino entrepreneur, today he could
recognize why we as a nation and as an economy have unwittingly
allowed one disaster after another. We deeply believed that our
intellectual superiority would magically arrest our economic
underperformance? We can dissect our challenges and come up with
solutions but for over half a century they haven’t worked?
“Education [is meant to have] prepared [us] for the future life
– given [us] command of ourselves; [we] had been trained to have
the full and ready use of all [our] capacities.” [John Dewey;
On education, Wikipedia.] But it takes the more mature mind to
engage in critical thinking – to be thinking, questioning,
problem-solving and [doing the right] decision-making, to paraphrase
Nilo E. Colinares.
It remains difficult for
Juan de la Cruz to call upon his more mature mind and accept certain
realities? While Asians generally are uncomfortable with
competitiveness Western-style, our neighbors have realized that their
economies must be competitive if they are to generate strong national
incomes. But we pin our hopes on softer elements like the growing
interest of investors in our country. But there is a great distance
between interest and actually generating appreciably higher national
revenues. For example, beyond aggressive levels of investments we
need the vital few industries that we can sustain – i.e., because
we have the potential to attain competitive advantage.
And that is why the mind
has to come into play – everything starts in the mind. And as the
Americans would put it, everything must be on the table. But given
our hierarchical culture, parochial bias and tendency to personalize,
we can’t seem to put critical elements on the table, effectively
cutting ourselves by the knees? We can’t start with the thought
that as an underdeveloped economy we can’t be competitive. We must
fully participate in and tap what the world has to offer: beyond
foreign investments, we need technology, innovation as well as
talent, product and market development. We can’t assemble them
ourselves – our intellectual superiority notwithstanding!
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