(Speech delivered during the first general membership meeting of the Philippine Marketing Association on Jan. 23, 2002)
The importance of education |
And this is not all. Researchers have also discovered that the leadership based of a nation grows in proportion to the spread of education, especially quality education. In societies that invest heavily on education, leaders emerge who man the key sectors of national life, far more than in societies that make no such investments. And the contrasts are stark between traditional and modern societies, and between closed and open societies.
Sadly, however, education is an area where our record has been faltering in recent years. We see the signs of strains as our educational system continues to be overburdened by ever increasing enrollment, as government finances fall short of funding needed improvements and as the quality of instruction has deteriorated.
• In our public schools, one third of enrollees drop out before reaching grade six. Fully another third will drop out before finishing high school.
• Tests show that there is barely any additional knowledge gained by public schoolers between grades five and six.
Improving the quality of mass education is an economic imperative for us to be truly competitive in the world. What we are now seeing is the effect of over 20 years of under- investment in the future of our youth. If we allow this to continue, even the competitive strengths that I noted earlier will surely dissipate.
There is no question that the present administration has put a high priority on education and Secretary Roco has certainly initiated dramatic reforms to remove many of the anomalies of the past. But I think that he himself will admit that he continues to face enormous challenges and one of the principal ones must be the difficulty of stretching the country’s limited resources to keep up with a population growth that is one of the highest in the world. The quality of Philippine education has been gradually deteriorating over time precisely because of this.
I do not want to stray beyond my topic here today, but let me just quickly say that a study of our global competitiveness would not be complete without a clear-eyed and frank assessment of population pressure on national capacity for development and modernization. I believe there is no way for us to raise the education and skills of our people and truly alleviate the plight of our poorest sectors unless we move into a clear, responsible and concerted effort for family planning in our country.
It is also very clear that government alone cannot carry the full burden of raising the standards of education in our country. The private sector must be involved, as in fact many Filipino companies are already.
Within the Ayala Group we can point to a couple of initiatives that we have been working on in the last few years in the areas of education and leadership building. Our contribution to education has been through a school program that we have called Centex – short for center for excellence. Centex is a fully funded elementary school for very gifted children and from the poorest families. Our first school was started in Tondo and is being built up to ultimately handle close to 500 students per year. We believe that the elementary phase is a critical formative period for a student. It is our hope that these gifted children will receive from this specially designed program, the necessary educational foundation to compete with the best students in the country. The children at each level of the school are already consistently reaping awards and have topped DECS-administered national exams. Our second school was opened last year in Batangas. It is our hope that other companies and individuals can help us expand this concept.
We have also tried to build leadership skills among older students. Each year, we ask major colleges around the country to send us the names of their top 10 students. We ask for excellence not only in terms of academic qualities but also in terms of leadership skills. The list of over 600 top students gets reduced to about 70 after a rigorous process of evaluations and panel interviews. We then take these 70 students each year through an intensive program of lectures, outdoor challenges and group interaction. The lectures are handled by outstanding Filipinos based both here and abroad so that they can get real examples of Filipinos who have excelled in a whole range of different fields. These young leaders from different parts of the country leave the conference with a renewed and deeper sense of commitment of what they can do for their country. Their networking and interaction continue after the conference through their own web page and through other activities that we organize.
These are certainly modest contributions in relation to the needs of the country but we are confident that these programs will have a significant impact on the development of the young people that they reach. I am certain that all of you in the Philippine Marketing Association can understand why we assign so much importance to building centers of excellence in our country.
Today, there are many private initiatives along these lines in the country, but we need so many more. The overwhelming objective is the same: to spread hope among our countrymen through the liberating force of education, and to nurture this basic competitive advantage of our people in the world.
Beyond the political debates that mark our national life today, beyond the premature speculations about who should be President in 2004, I believe we will do better by focusing on the question of how we can succeed as a nation in this new global marketplace. What can we do to upgrade the skills of our existing work force and what do we need to do to make sure that the next generation is better prepared for the challenges ahead. This is what will produce jobs and this is what will give our countrymen a chance for a better future.
In the marketing profession, we have seen Filipino professionals excel not only here in our country, but in the Asia Pacific region and in the world. It is testimony to Filipino leadership that your association’s national awards for marketing excellence – the Agora awards – have been enthusiastically adopted by other members of the Asia Pacific Marketing Federation. You all know what these new standards are all about.
Amidst all the trials then that our people and our country are experiencing today, amidst the uncertainties ferried to our shores by events abroad, there shines this ray of optimism that we Filipinos can prevail and will prevail – because we are a resourceful, intrepid and talented people.
Let me end with a striking and amusing tribute to the Filipino, written by the distinguished British novelist James Hamilton-Paterson and I quote: "No matter how accurately the blows of fate seem aimed at him, there is always something that remains unhit… No matter what becomes of this planet, it would be no surprise if the last human being left alive on earth turned out to be a Filipino."