Education Forum for Asia 2005 Annual Conference

Opening Ceremony Speech-

Fidel V. Ramos

                 Former President, the Republic of the Philippines

Thank you Mr. Chairman for your very kind introduction, Chairman Long Yongtu Secretary General of the co-sponsor Boao Forum for Asia.  I also greet her Excellency Madame Chen Zhili State Councilor in charge of education throughout all of China.  Let’s give her a big hand.  Your Excellencies, the Ministers, and all other distinguished high officials, the participants, the supporters, and the young people who are with us in this very important Education Forum for Asia and the world.

Before I begin, let me greet all of you from the Philippines from which I come, a rousing Mabuhay!  Mabuhay means shake hands with each other, go ahead please shake hands, over there to your right, to your left, back and front.  Mabuhay also means “may you have good health, long life”.  It also means “Happy Birthday”, “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year”, good luck to everyone, Mabuhay.

Madame Chen Zhili and I were conversing earlier during the photo opportunity, and she mentioned that this is a very good day to be here in Beijing.  Indeed it is, and we thank you Madame for making it happen because this is called a golden day in autumn, so let us applaud all of the organizers: the Boao Forum for Asia, UNESCO, and the China Scholarship Council.

And, indeed more than just pleasant weather.  This grand opportunity of being together gives us the chance to renew ourselves with a new sense of vitality.  And, as take stock of our Education Forum for Asia or EFA, which was started two years ago, and what it has been able to do in less than two years since our Initiators Meeting in December 2003, all of us associated with this important venture should indeed be highly pleased. 

As you will recall, last year’s 2004 Education Forum for Asia Conference, right here, was a splendid success, and today once again we come together to explore education and other development strategies for the Asia Pacific countries in our new century.  As I see more and more countries and individual co-workers crossing the bridge of cooperation in Asian education that our forum has built together, I continue to be energized and confident of our better future in our part of the world.  It is clear, dear friends, that the ability of this forum to bring people together and to unite us in our common goal of developing and providing quality education in Asia cannot be underestimated.  That was our hope at the beginning, and today it is an achievement about which we can all be proud.

In recent years, Asia has become the world’s fastest growing economic region.  Nowadays, many experts are saying that Asia will soon become the main source of global economic power.  It is that forthcoming era, when our continent becomes the growth engine for the world, we all hope to see, in our lifetime, and benefit from. 

Yet, we are all also well aware of how relatively weak education in Asia still is when compared to education in the West.  And that is a record that we would like to remove, because we’ll improve upon this record.  We are also even more conscious of the reality that education in many of our countries is still plagued by inequalities that while tiny elites, a small percentage of the population, get first rate education, the masses receive very little education, if at all.  And we all know how a poor education system, a stagnant economy, shorter life expectancy, and poverty are all parts of the same viscous cycle. 

Of course, we are also happy to see how every Asia Pacific country struggles to deliver good basic education to all its people especially the young ones.  I also see many countries gathering together in this forum to pool their resources and expertise in order to explore ways of eliminating the inequalities and deficiencies in Asian education.  The answer to national weaknesses and deficiencies is to increase international cooperation, communication, and interaction so that we can reinforce each other in strengthening the education system everywhere.  All of us here today, dear friends, are committed to working toward a peaceful, healthy, and prosperous Asia, a resurgent Asia, that could play in a leadership role in the world of the 21^st Century. 

To be sure, the power of our education forum has its limits, but we can all certainly help to mobilize, we the education experts, scholars, educational institutions, student leaders, and government officials.  Surely we can get all these experts and authorities to sit down together, reason together, and work together on the education issues and problems that individual countries in the region face.  By getting people, particularly the teachers themselves and the leaders to act together, we can collaborate more closely towards eliminating the inequalities in education and enabling every national education system to reach its full potential. 

That’s the bad news.  But now I have good news for you.  As you will recall, we created earlier an Asia Foreign Study Program in cooperation with the Chinese Ministry of Education.  The scholarship program, in its Chinese application, has now begun working, empowered by generous contributions from the Chinese Ministry of Education, the Beijing Municipal Commission on Education, and by numerous Chinese universities. The first students to receive Asia Foreign Study Scholarships have already arrived in China and have already been placed in their respective schools.  So, let’s give everybody a big hand again. 

I am certain, dear friends, that our scholarship recipients will ultimately become “Asian Educational Exchange Ambassadors” educational emissaries between and among our peoples, and eventually, as they assume more responsibility, become leaders of their respective countries.  And in a little while you will be hearing from some of the representatives of our scholars. 

I also would like to sound a warm welcome to our Ministers.  They who are responsible for steering education policy and education achievements in their respective countries.  This is the first time that this has happened, and they are coming from 19 Asian countries, and we hope that you will keep coming back to our Asia educational forum.  The Ministers will share country experience and exchange ideas on the theme of this year’s conference, which is “Education Development Strategies for Asian Countries in the New Century”. 

The conference sessions, as you probably already know, will explore such topics, as “Vocational Education”, “Cross-Cultural Management”, “Asia Art Education”, and “Strategic Development of Small and Medium-sized Higher Education Institutions.”  Conference discussions will range from the theoretical to the practical.  They will also teach ways of putting together macro-education ideas into practice down to the local level.

By the way, I have been informed that the Haidian District of Beijing, which is where we are in our conference venue, in the Nirvana Hotel, will hold an Education Festival as a way of promoting the work that we do here. 

Now, let me cut short my message and come to my closing message.  Let us remind ourselves as leaders and educators of how important, how critical our countries’ futures all are and this is the work to which you and I have dedicated our lives.  The single key to Asia’s progressive development is the strengthening of Asian education and accessing it to a maximum number of people.  By this, we mean not only higher education but also elementary education, vocational/technical education, and non-formal education. Currently, we need to institute a system of lifelong learning. 

In other words, the secret to Asia’s success in winning the future is education, more education, and more and more education.  In its broadest sense, dear friends, education to me is the most powerful weapon for mass upliftment, the most effective weapon to fight poverty, injustice, corruption, bad governance, joblessness, and endemic diseases.  And so this is the higher challenge for all of us who are here in the 2005 Asia Edu education forum.  

And so let us invest our efforts into creating a better educated and better motivated, and therefore a more peaceful and more prosperous Asia, especially for the younger ones who will come after us.  And so once again I say thank you to the People’s Republic of China represented here by Madame State Councilor Chen Zhili, thank you.  And once, more Mabuhay to everyone.