Education Forum for Asia
NEWSFLASH
October 2005
In the News: Current News and Events in Education and Asian Society
Japanese, Nepalese Students Promote Environmental Awareness
At first glance, there are few visible connections between the gleaming technological oasis that is the Yokohama campus of Japan''s Musashi Institute of Technology and a government-run elementary school in Nepal''s Patan city, part of the capital Kathmandu.
But dotted seemingly everywhere at the Yokohama campus are recycling bins, greenery and touches such as lights that turn on only when someone is in a corridor, toilets that conserve water, and other efforts to make the campus have as little adverse impact on the environment as possible.
And, if all goes well, many of those innovations will be a continuing part of that elementary school, and others, in Nepal as well. As will environment-education modules, collaborative projects, and continuing exchanges between MI-Tech and Nepalese students at the elementary, secondary and university level.
For the last three years, students and staff from MI-Tech have been traveling to the South Asian country to seek ways to combat global warming and environmental degradation and to impart a spirit of cooperation and connection among students, teachers and professors from both countries. The Japanese students visit schools and colleges in Nepal, interact, share ideas and views with their Nepalese counterparts, and participate in environment-related activities.
"I think I have a better understanding of global environmental issues, learned a great deal about Nepal, and have made friends here," Yumi Kurishima, a MI-Tech student from Tokyo, said.
And students from Nepal''s National College say the program gives them opportunities for hands-on experience, development of new skills and techniques, and even a chance to learn about a little about Japanese culture.
"It also allows opportunities for partnerships," said Manoj Shrestha, adding, "Students from MI-Tech and the Nepalese college have already developed a plan for future collaboration."
Brenda Bushell, a MI-Tech associate professor who led the Japanese students to Nepal -- her third team -- again this year, says: "The program is designed to cater to the needs of students in Japan who lately look for something deeper from their education than just what they get in classrooms."
"The aim is to bridge the gap in education of environmental studies and management. Although students can graduate from universities in Japan with a solid understanding of the subject, they are seldom introduced to the issues as they relate to the rest of Asia," Bushell said.
The Nepal field-study also offers benefits for Japanese graduates who are looking for careers that interact with other parts of Asia. After a year of initial research and two years of individually funded programs in Nepal, Japan''s education ministry officially recognized the goals of the MI-Tech program in 2005 with a grant through 2007 that is being used to provide a study and research-based program aimed at furthering environmental aims in Nepal.
"We received a substantial grant this year" for what Bushell says is the first grassroots program for students in Nepal and Japan.
"We will build a learning model, gaining from the experience of the past three years, and hopefully receive more support in the future," she added.
MI-Tech, which has high-tech digital video recording equipment and a top-flight shooting and editing studio in Yokohama, also uses video footage and still photographs gathered during the Nepal trips to produce interactive CD and DVD education modules -- a "cyber-campus" -- to pass along the benefits of the field trips to students in both countries who cannot attend in person. Professors from Japan and Nepal, as well as undergraduate and graduate students, also make digital lectures that are already available to individual schools and colleges in Nepal and are planned for use in Japanese educational institutions as well. And the MI-Tech students are working to produce a "destination-Nepal" "cyber" environmental-education unit for a class of Japanese elementary students at a school close to their campus.
Nepalese collaborator Jasmine Shakya said she would love to be able to participate in field studies at Japanese schools, but for the time being a lack of travel funds limits the physical part of the program to Nepal. Still, the Nepalese students are attracted by the opportunity provided to share their skills and experiences with their Japanese counterparts.
This summer, the 18 students and staff from MI-Tech and their Nepalese colleagues started an environmental management program that included working with a local women''s organization in Kathmandu on a community compost program as well as running an environment-education program for 90 children in Grade 6 at a government-run school in Patan city.
Under the leadership of the MI-Tech and National University students, the elementary school children researched environmental problems in their school community, planted saplings, dug dirt pits, and "greened" the Patan school compound. And when the Japanese students revisited the school a week later, they found the children had already picked up from where they had left off.
"They had completed greening of the school compound themselves, and to me this was most satisfying," Kurishima said.
Daisuke Matsumoto added he had benefited from the field trip in a different way as well. "I have had something more, some useful insights into the Nepalese economy" that, he said, will help in his graduate research into the possibility of a euro-style single currency for Asia.
Source: Kyoto Times
KUIS Plays its Role in Turning Malaysia into an Education Hub
Kuala Lumpur. The Kolej Universiti Islam Antarabangsa Selangor (KUIS) is ready to play its role as a private higher education institution to contribute towards efforts in realizing Malaysia''s vision of becoming the region''s education hub.
All programs offered by the university were of international standards, and to date, KUIS has successfully attracted 200 foreign students, according to its Rector, Datuk Mohamed Adanan Isman.
"This is a proud beginning for us as the international community has now recognized Malaysia as an education center", he told Bernama in an interview at Bandar Seri Kota, Bangi.
The majority of the foreign students are from South Asia -- Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Brunei and Cambodia -- while the rest are students from China, India, Gambia, Somalia, Senegal, Comoros, Mali, Chad and Turkey.
Mohamed Adanan said initially, KUIS only offered Islamic studies courses to the foreign students, but since 2000, all its diploma programs were open to every student, local or international.
He said KUIS now offered 16 diploma programs in five disciplines--Islamic Studies and Civilization, Management and Muamalah, Technology and Information Science, Languages and Communications, and Allied Health Sciences.
On their promotion to attract international students to KUIS, Mohamed Adanan said KUIS has signed several Memorandums of Understanding (MOU) with certain parties to channel information to the foreign embassies on the educational opportunities provided by KUIS.
It is the hope of KUIS leaders that more such programs will emerge in the country, attracting an increased number of international students and helping Malaysia become an education center in Asia.
Source: Bernama.com Malaysian National News Agency By Mafuzah Ahmad
Intel Spurs WiMAX Deployments in Southeast Asia: Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam to Benefit from Asian Broadband Campaign
Santa Clara, California, USA. -- Aiming to accelerate WiMAX wireless broadband deployment in Southeast Asian countries, Intel Corporation today announced the Asian Broadband Campaign, an effort that will provide broadband wireless consulting and expertise along with silicon and technical services.
Intel will work with governments, telecommunications regulators, education, health and agriculture public sector agencies and carriers, True Corporation in Thailand and Telekom Malaysia among them, to help them prepare for and conduct WiMAX trials. The trials will test connectivity among key public and private sector groups. Once broadly deployed, the countries hope the technology will help them meet the United Nations Millennium Development goals to eradicate poverty and hunger, expand primary education, promote gender equality, reduce child mortality, combat diseases, ensure environmental sustainability and develop a global partnership for development by 2015.
"The developing countries of Southeast Asia have committed to the United Nations that they will work to meet these objectives," said Sean Maloney, executive vice president of Intel''s Mobility Group. "Intel believes that technology, and specifically WIMAX, can be one of the foundations to help these countries reach these goals. Standards-based wireless broadband connectivity can help enable technologies that can facilitate better education, healthcare, agricultural productivity and incomes while improving small businesses and eGovernment access and technologies that support entire families."
As part of Intel''s Digital ASEAN (d-ASEAN) vision of an integrated region of connected villages, provinces, cities and countries, Intel is helping to begin WiMAX trials in Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines by the end of 2005. Trials in Indonesia and Vietnam are expected to take place in 2006.
Since late 2004, Intel has consulted with government agencies and service providers on issues including spectrum policy, rural and suburban sustainability modeling, and planning trial deployment strategies.
In Thailand, WiMAX trials are being conducted in the communities of Khorat, Chiang Mai and Roi Et to test services for rural and suburban healthcare, education, SMB incubation, agriculture supply chain integration and other consumer services such as Voice over IP. The trials will help assess technical and commercial viability models using different backhaul and last-mile WiMAX architecture and will be reviewed by international aid organizations as a possible blueprint to use across the ASEAN countries.
A WiMAX trial is currently underway in Malaysia''s government administrative hub, Putrajaya. In Kepala Batas, communities of medical practitioners, students and teachers at different remote locations recently tested the uses of WiMAX in the health and education sectors. With these trials the Malaysian government hopes to promote its digital vision to make wireless broadband technologies such as WiMAX more accessible and affordable to more citizens. The ongoing WiMAX trial is expected to help accelerate the rate of PC and Internet adoption and lay the foundation for Malaysia''s d-ASEAN vision.
In the Philippines, the government has a goal to increase the use of PC technology in government offices and agencies and establish a nationwide digital infrastructure. They expect to see the deployment of wireless broadband technologies including WiMAX across key sectors of the country before the end of 2005.
Source: intel.com
Putting Words into Action: Quotes and Speeches from Leaders in the World of Education, Social Development, and Positive Change
Education International, 4th World Congress
Porto Alegre, Brazil, 22-26 July 2004
Introduction to the Congress Theme, “ Education for Global Progress”
Robert Harris, Education International
Colleagues, friends
Everyone has the right to education.
Toute personne a droit à l’education.
Toda persona tiene derecho a la educacion.
Toda pessoa tem direito à educaçào.
Subete hito wa kyo-i-ku (w)o ukeru kenri (w)o u-suru.
Jeder hat das Recht auf Bildung.
So begins Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights!
Kofi Annan highlighted these words in his message. Mary said our theme is enormous, but the key is that education is a basic human right. These words underpin our theme.
When they were adopted in 1948 the world was already globalizing. The special significance of the Declaration was that these rights were held to be Universal; they were inherent in being human. “Everyone has the right to education”. The Declaration was the clearest, most unequivocal rejection up to that time of ideas of superiority and inferiority, ideas that had been taken for granted in the time of colonial empires, ideas that had reached their apotheosis under the nazis and the holocaust. Those ideas were rejected. At the United Nations, the political leaders of the day said that everyone had rights. And everyone had the right to education. But then, as now, there remained a giant gap between rhetoric and reality.
Twenty years later, in 1968, Philip Coombs at UNESCO wrote The World Educational Crisis, a book that became the basis for the early involvement in education of the international development community, including the World Bank.
But 1968 was also the year of protest and challenge. A friend passed me a copy of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire of Brazil. As a young teacher I was inspired by that book.
The two works took radically different approaches. Coombs wrote much about the efficient use of resources, but also about qualitative questions. Freire portrayed education and learning as revolutionary and liberating.
But they also shared common ground. Notably, they started from the premise that everyone had the right to education. Conceptually, educational thinking had taken a giant step forward. Practically, however, the long march towards Education for All had barely begun.
Freire went into exile, and then returned to Brazil in time to be the keynote speaker at the 1980 WCOTP Assembly in Brasilia. I recall the human warmth of this man, and his sheer delight at being able to discuss education once again in his homeland.
Later he became Minister of Education in Sao Paulo.
That these works by Freire and Coombs in the sixties had global impact was a sign of the times. For the globalization of ideas has been one of the major agents for cha,nge in our global village.
But we know that the world educational crisis has not gone away.
Far from it!
One of the reasons is quite simply lack of resources. Yet the resources required to provide elementary education for all are feasible. Cost calculations by the UNDP indicate up to 75 billion USD per annum would achieve all eight Millennium Development Goals including Education for All. Compare that with the allocation by one country – the United States – for reconstruction in one other country – Iraq. That cost is 90 billion USD per annum. Compare worldwide expenditure on the military and on education, as UNICEF has done in earlier editions of The State of the World’s Children. (I would also draw your attention to this year’s edition, which is dedicated to the education of girls, and contains a wealth of information and statistics that you would find tremendously helpful in your campaigns.)
The point is that education has always been the key to progress. The world’s strongest economies were built on quality education in public schools. So it is logical to assert today that education is the key to global progress.
Let us look back briefly at over 100 years of the history of education. Those nations that introduced compulsory elementary education for all in the late 19th and early 20th centuries created an enormously productive use of their human potential. They became the industrialized countries.
Yet progress in these countries was not regular. It was not a steady linear progression. On the contrary, there were major setbacks along the way: depression, war, and social upheaval. Education both influenced and was influenced by these events. Education was at the center of the struggle for equal rights for women, for civil rights, for an end to discrimination. In the countries emerging from colonialism, teachers often took the lead in struggles for independence. And education was at the heart of the development of democracies. Controversies over education were right at the center of the great social and political upheavals of the 19th and 20th centuries – the separation of church and state, the rise of nationalism. Education was vital to the values that each society sought to establish as the underpinning for its cohesion.
Those values were not the same in all countries. There was a world of difference between the values of nazi Germany or militarist Japan, or the Stalinist Soviet Union, all of which stifled dissent, and those of the liberal democracies founded upon values of freedom of expression.
Education’s role in economic progress is well established. But even more important is education’s role in social progress. Education for citizenship developed at the same time as the industrial revolution.
Those same questions are before us today, with even greater force. For globalization carries both opportunity and risk. Those who regard globalization as a good thing per se give little attention to the risks. How often have you heard political and economic leaders argue that the imperatives of globalization require that we accept closing of industries and cuts in public expenditure?
There is an assumption out there that economic progress will continue, indefinitely, without setbacks. But that is not the lesson of history.
There are three great risks we can identify. The first is the risk of breakdowns in social cohesion resulting from gross inequities and exclusion. This is not speculation. This is real. It is already happening. Look at the prisons in most countries, stretched far beyond their capacity. Look at the problem of illegal immigration. Look at the ghettos spreading in and around our cities. The fact of the matter is that we cannot indefinitely prevent major social upheaval solely by repression. You have to address the root causes, and those are inequity, exclusion and injustice. And you have to start with equity in education.
The second great risk is intolerance. After the emergence from colonialism, the civil rights struggles in North America, the end of apartheid in South Africa, we might have imagined a new era of understanding and tolerance between people. But in every one of the industrialized countries there are strong, albeit minority, political movements based on intolerance, with strong racist overtones. We also see the resurgence of old demons of intolerance based on religions – demons that afflicted many of our societies in centuries past that played a major role in the setbacks of the past. September 11, 2001, brought home the devastating consequences of intolerance derived from religious extremism.
Extremism is not the province of any one of the world’s great religions. All of them have strands of extremism providing the rationale for terror or for repression. These extremisms feed off each other. Their political impact can be enormous. The risks for civilization as we know it are horrendous.
The third risk is environmental. If economic progress means destruction of our eco-systems, no one wins. From the destruction of the forests of the Amazon or Southeast Asia, to the over-use of fossil fuels, the impact on the earth’s capacity to support life is known. Unregulated globalization means little is done to reverse the trend. El Nino occurs more frequently, causing drought in Asia and Australia, and devastating storms in the Northern Hemisphere. Here in Porto Alegre, the thinning of the ozone layer over the Southern Hemisphere can be felt every summer, as it is in my hometown of Adelaide. One very practical question highlights this risk – the growing worldwide shortage of access to clean water.
All three risks are inter-related. Inequity and intolerance all too often go hand in hand. And the growing difficulties of the environment have enormous implications for equity.
Here we return to our three sub-themes:
First: The rationale for education as a public service rather than a commodity. That rationale is based on the case for equity. It is also based on the case for citizenship, for learning to live together. Those two principles, equity and living together, form the foundation for education as a public service, not a commodity.
Second: The right to education means more, much more, than access to a place called school. It means the right to learn. Maybe we thought that was self-evident. But we cannot escape questions of the objectives of education, of what is to be learned, of the values that underlie that learning.
That again reinforces the rationale for public responsibility for education. Within the parameters set by a democratic society, in order that teachers can exercise their professional responsibilities as facilitators of learning, their right to teach must be protected and promoted.
Third: Those teachers must be qualified. Qualified by the preparation and study they undertake to undertake this most complex and subtle, this most interactive and potentially this most rewarding of professions. As UNICEF writes this year: Teachers spark hope! Qualified also by their motivation, their desire to provide something special, to draw out the potential, “the treasure within” each child, each young person, or each adult.
We have to stop the loss of good teachers, and attract capable people, young people, or people who wish to change from another job. Let’s face it. Many of us in this room are of the generations of the sixties or the seventies. Where is the new generation that will take education forward? There are no short cuts. If we want quality education, we must retain and recruit quality teachers and we must give existing personnel the chance to upgrade and to develop their professional capacities through in-service training. Teachers, too, need access to life-long learning.
On each of these sub-themes, the EI Executive Board invites you to consider the issues synthesized in the paper, and in the draft resolutions.
As has always been the case in education, there are real dilemmas to be addressed. How to reconcile equity with efficiency? How to defend the right to dissent while respecting democratic principles? How to attract enough able teacher educators to inspire and prepare an unprecedented number of new teachers? How to reconcile the short-term and the medium-term (which includes giving a chance to today’s children while preparing the teachers of tomorrow)? How to facilitate beneficial mobility while avoiding the traps of poaching and the brain drain? The questions for discussion are there to help open the debate in each of the three breakout sessions.
This is a defining moment. The policy choices are clear: commercialization and the market, or reaffirmation of education as a right. Overall, there are two inescapable issues that political decision-makers must address: Resources and Participation.
The financial resources are a question of political will. The will to make war always mobilizes resources. So must the will to provide quality public education for all.
Human resources will be found too, once we restore the idea of pedagogy of hope. (As Freire wrote in 1995.)
50 years ago Europe was able to emerge from the ravages of war, because of the vision that was the Marshal Plan. That same vision is needed today, to achieve the resources required for the Millennium Development Goals.
By mid- 2005, the countries of the G8 – the seven leading economies plus Russia, indeed all 30 members of the OECD, must decide collectively to fund a new “Marshal Plan” this time not for Europe but for the world. The plan exists. National leaders all endorsed the eight MDGs at the UN four years ago. By mid-2005 they must decide if they will implement the plan, and if they will fund it. We have to help them take the right decisions, by mobilizing public opinion.
And we all know that money alone is not enough. It is a necessary but not sufficient condition. People must be part of the solution. Education unions have a key role to play in making that participation possible.
Firstly, the participation of our own members. But also the participation of fellow employees through the trade union movement. And the participation of millions of people working through organizations of civil society committed to social justice.
I cannot stress too much the importance of the next 12 months – to June 2005.
We must mobilize public opinion. We must share our vision. It responds to the dreams of many – of working people, the poor, women and girls.
Education unions have an established capacity to organize and to build coalitions, as we have done in the Global Campaign for Education. The theme of this congress is much more than an aspiration. It confronts us all with a set of imperatives. And those imperatives begin with the words from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
“Everyone has the right to education”
Organization Profile
This section highlights an organization or program that is making a difference in the fields of education or social development.
Global Knowledge Partnership’s Youth Social Enterprise Initiative (YSEI)
While the movement for social entrepreneurship is growing, it is much more widespread in developed countries, particularly in the USA and UK. Even as organizations such as Ashoka and the Schwab Foundation have aimed to identify local social entrepreneurs working in developed countries, these seem to be the exception. Many social entrepreneurs working in the developing world are from OECD countries. And very few young people consider social entrepreneurship as an option as they launch their careers. In developing countries, strong societal and economic pressures constrain the best and brightest potential leaders to choose more typical professional career paths.
Across the globe, social entrepreneurship is gathering momentum. More and more social entrepreneurs have gained recognition in countries as diverse as India and the United States and the concept itself has spread all the way from the rural communities that Ashoka Fellows serve to the United Nations. Yet the future impact of the movement lies with youth. In Asia, young people make up almost half of the population. Young people have the passion and energy, the strategic social positioning, and the natural tendency towards problem solving that is a key characteristic of the entrepreneurial ‘ground-clearing'' process. If social entrepreneurship is to bring increased efficiency and innovation to conventional development, the most dynamic young people must actively embrace it.
Social movements have this in common with epidemics, that in order for them to spread, they must have an average reproduction rate of at least one. However, unlike diseases, social movements will only thrive when the environment is conducive enough for their success. If talented young people are not attracted and catalyzed towards social entrepreneurship by such an environment that offers suitable support mechanisms, the current beginnings of this movement, particularly in developing countries, could die out.
YSEI focuses on four key things that will be necessary if young people are to embrace social entrepreneurship: knowledge, community, finance and mentorship. YSEI also assist young social entrepreneur in visioning their social innovation with solid knowledge of what exist out there in term of successful social enterprises and development model that they can replicate or recombine as to fit their local development context.
Become a Fellow: The YSEI Fellowship Program provides essential knowledge and tools, mentorship programs, networking & seed grants up to 15,000 USD per project.
If you are 1) Under 30 years old, 2) Living in Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Philippines, or Sri Lanka 3) In search for support and opportunities.
Submit your application form & executive summary by October 31, 2005 to ysei@globalknowledge.org or visit http://www.globalknowledge.org/ysei/ for further information.
| 
Previous: September 2005