In the private sector
they recognize that knowledge must be translated into the requisite
attitude, skills and habit – thus the acronym KASH that training
and development professionals adhere to. While pundits, in the US,
are called “talking heads” – i.e., they talk a good game but
what about play a good game?
A friend, educated abroad
with multiple degrees, explains why UP ranks relatively lower against
the rest of the world: “They meet the required population of
PhDs but in this country we have yet to develop a symbiotic
relationship between the academe and industry.” It reminded the
writer of a US consultancy (of mostly PhDs);
and on a trip to Asia they asked him if he’d mind spending a
session with them. “We have updated
our research and are inviting practitioners to critique it and given
our US orientation, we need more insights into the world.” And
a professor, known in business schools including the Philippines, was
about to publish the book that made him world renowned. And the
writer had wanted some folks from Asia to be the first to be exposed
to it; his schedule was tight but the professor agreed to meet on a
Saturday and in his study at his home and offered to meet the group
at the airport.
Driving
from the airport and upon seeing a pizza restaurant he commented: “I
had just met with the people from that pizza company, and told them
that I was meeting up with you folks from half way around the world.”
He was the consultant of a global
pizza brand headquartered in the same city as his university, and
they were proud of what to them started as a local pizzeria. “You
come from that part of the world that we know very little about, and
I am sorry that we have to do it on a Saturday. But please feel at
home. I’d be very honest; I wanted foreigners to be the first to
critique my research.” And this
professor has also lectured at the GE development center and given
its global orientation, he was not exactly ignorant of the world.
We
don’t have the environment of a US and so our academic community
has very little access, like these examples, to the world. For
instance, the equivalent of a GE would be the handful of entities of
our industrialist-billionaires. But they are locally focused and thus
the challenge of our education institutions goes deeper than what it
appears. How do we teach about global citizenship? It starts
with Philippine citizenship? It’s about the common good and in our
faith it’s the Great Commandment or in secular parlance, the Golden
Rule? In other words, how do we teach the young how to move beyond
family and beyond our parochial orientation? How do we teach
compassion so that it is not about giving fish but teaching how to
fish? How do we teach them about the future – e.g., interdependence
is beyond family and beyond country? How do we teach them character –
so that they don’t feel inferior against the powerful and those who
don’t play by the rules? If sheltering the young was meant to teach
character, how come we demonstrate very little of it – i.e., we’ve
recognized, if not accepted, being called among the most corrupt?
Hierarchy may be the law
of nature, but given man’s superiority, he learned to be
egalitarian – because quite easily the human condition could undo
his superior capacity. And it has again come to the fore with the
LIBOR scandal (which, as the press reported, bank regulators in the
West first noted was a brewing problem before the 2008 collapse of
the global financial system.) How do we teach the young that the days
of lords and masters are about the past – and the past is to learn
from not to live in? How do we demonstrate Einstein’s “the value
of education is not the learning of many facts but the training of
the mind to think”? How do we teach the young how to be
inquisitive? How do we teach them to look to the future with the
confidence to nurture great expectations? We’ve started with K+12
and the use of the vernacular, but what is our vision for education?
It can’t be an ivory tower? To attain economic prosperity we need –
beyond investments – technology and innovation as well as talent,
product and market development. They can be taught but the real
challenge is to bring them down from the head to heart and to the
gut!
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