Changes

To Take A Stand 

By Mario Antonio G. Lopez

A FEW years ago some friends and I exchanged ideas regarding Mr. Dado Banatao, his prodigious accomplishments and his desire to help the Philippines. To recap for those whose memories need shaking, many consider him to be “the most successful Filipino” in the United States, whose companies are worth billions of dollars. He is credited with major contributions to the creation and invention of microchips and motherboards that have allowed us to enjoy faster and more powerful computers.

He has poured great resources into educating current and future Filipino engineers and scientists in collaboration with the PHILDEV Program of the Ayala Foundation, the Philippine government, and the top 10 engineering schools.

I joined the throng who applauded him then and continue to deeply admire his faith in our country which is evidenced by his investments in Filipino schools. One wishes that more of such Filipinos who continue to make much money from the Philippines would do likewise in the manner of Mr. Banatao -- the Ayalas, the Ramon del Rosario clan, the Eugenio and Fernando Lopez clans, and Mr. Manny Pangilinan. (I apologize for my inability to mention the many other Filipinos who ought to be mentioned.)

However, there is concern that many, if not most, of the trained engineers and scientists will migrate elsewhere rather than stay here in an industry that ought to benefit from an increasing number of Filipinos in the country. They will do so because the industry here, as it now stands, is unable to provide the challenge to their creativity and their need for good recompense. One can imagine what vibrant IT manufacturing and R&D industries can contribute to national incomes, given the Filipino engineers, scientists, technicians, and the management, skilled and semi-skilled human assets these industries will require. One can imagine how export earnings will increase as we shift from assembling imported parts into exporting built up IT equipment.

Many realize that both our temporary and permanent emigrants do send money back but we must imagine the amount that a full-blown exporting IT sector could bring in. Add to that the jobs that will be generated and the stimulation of growth and development in areas other than Metro Manila.

Many are worried that great as the contribution of Mr. Banatao is and will be, that there continues the challenge of upgrading basic education to ensure the continuous supply of well rounded, functionally literate and numerate, science adept basic school grads to feed our universities with preference for science and technology courses. That greater preference, of course, will arise if and only if people see a good future in these courses. We have to put in our share to ensure that improvements in basic education happen.

In a TV interview, Mr. Banatao was emphatic that the fastest way for Philippines to move forward is to produce a lot more scientists, engineers like India. He did deplore the fact that Filipinos maybe wasting time in liberal arts and humanities instead of excelling in science, technology. This results in our being “30 years behind the US,” that “we live in the past” and that may account for why we are so backward.

Mr. Banatao later qualified that comment on liberal education and I was satisfied with the qualification. Suffice it to say that in good universities, students, regardless of major field of study, are supposed to share two years of university college, where they are first introduced to the liberal arts (which include the humanities) before they are sent forth to their majors. Knowledge of these areas helps make for a more rounded person with a more holistic world view (what we call in Tagalog pananaw). I remain convinced that we need those two years. What we need a lot less of in the meantime are more majors in esoteric subjects and courses in which we already have an oversupply of graduates that our society and economy have no immediate need for.

If we are to make our K to 12 and two-year liberal education more meaningful it must help Filipinos develop a strong sense of who they are as a people and what they can offer the world instead of being the malleable people eager to spew out what precious little local value they think we possess in exchange for perceived superior western, often purely capitalist-materialist values. Only on a bedrock of strong identity can we absorb the global contributions without losing ourselves.

We are so insecure as a people that we cannot even appreciate our native talent even when it offers us products equal to the best the world has to offer. Recently, a major university rejected a management system developed by its own faculty in favor of a world-famous brand for palpably no other reason than the homegrown tool was “untested.” I thought that was what universities were for, offering our talents the chance to prove themselves. If our own universities have no faith in the inventions of its own faculty, what do we expect the world to do?

I am told that a Singaporean investor whose Filipino talents created a science tutorial program now in use in Singapore schools has decided to locate somewhere in Bulacan and is offering programs developed by Filipinos while in Singapore (and now back here) to our government. I sincerely hope they will support this. God knows we need much better science education and the resident (well-paid) talent.

India, China, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore and Indonesia (yes, Indonesia) poured money into developing local hi-tech industries that would absorb the engineers and scientists the universities would produce. Their governments encouraged investments both by locals and in most cases foreign investments (excepting India during Nehru’s time and China until the ’90s) in local ventures. Minister Habibie’s science and technology program yielded for Indonesia an aircraft and aerospace industry, a shipbuilding industry, a construction industry, and a Metals Industry Development Center staffed by hundreds of PhDs and Master in Science, Technology and Engineering trained all over the world. This is the reason why they can manufacture their own planes, construct some of their naval vessels, have a thriving automotive industry that designs automobiles (the Kijang which we renamed the Revo, and the Innova which they co-designed with Toyota Thailand), and civil engineering technologies we now import in building our highways and skyways.

We need to reform our higher education systems as speedily as we can. Much has been said and will be said about the “proliferation of substandard” HEIs and I will not tackle that quagmire. Let me write on content. I once watched a local TV show where representatives from a consortium of engineering schools made the observation that the platforms of our different engineering degrees are from several to many years behind those of the more advanced universities globally. We cannot be competitive technologically with such bases.

Less obvious to the outside observer were the basic social and political reforms these countries introduced into their system to ensure that the science, technology and engineering capabilities seeds planted would sprout, take root and thrice, constantly nurtured by a nationally concerned, civically committed and technologically literate government.

MIRED IN THE PAST

The prodigious social reforms introduced in these countries escape us and hence we are mired in the past, as Banatao says. Many have observed that because “our leadership elite are addicted to the powers and privileges associated with that past” it is perpetrated. It is often said that that bane is what afflicted Cory Aquino and many in her team. Many see it afflicting Noynoy Aquino and his team. These are two presidents who rode high to the Palace on the wave of desired reforms and the urge to democracy. That is the bane that keeps most of our legislators making the right noises in the acts that they pass but embed poison pills in the implementing rules and regulations of the social reform measures they enact like the local government code, the CARP, the AFMA and export promotion among so many.

That is the bane that keeps most of the professional and business elite -- which includes many of us who are privileged to write columns like this -- oblivious to the need to reform the system so that the pie might grow and benefit more people. Many would keep the pie small because they have control of it rather than make it grow and lose their power even when it promises greater personal and national benefits. That is the bane that deludes

us into believing we have long ceased to be a feudal society and that there are no more oligarchs.

I hope I am wrong but I think we in the very thin layer of the advanced (i.e., Western) educated sector and moneyed elite have become as selfish as the worst in capitalist America (as against enlightened America), as I-me-my-mine/today-now-this-minute-oriented as the worst pro-unbridled capitalist Right-wingers of America, ever our exemplar.

This is where perhaps a re-reading (assuming we have read before) the novels of Rizal, the Decalogue of Mabini, the writings of F. Sionil Jose and Nick Joaquin; the less-publicized writings of Abinales, Rodil, Ileto and many others among the Filipinos; and the writings of many American, European and Asian scholars on the Philippines need to be read, taught and understood so that we finally know where we come from, what we are and what we wish to be. We need an accurate calculation of the gaps that must be bridged if we are to rise as a nation to the position we long to be. We cannot blame our past and “the others” because our present and we are largely is in our control.