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To the University President, Dr. Divinia C.

Chavez, the rest of the University administation, and to everyone else gathered here today, good afternoon. I am deeply grateful to you for inviting me here as keynote speaker.

May I also say that I highly commend this event organized by the Cavite State University administration today, going out of its way to reach out its constituents and the stakeholders in the University's future with regards as to its vision of a global university by 2020. Congratulations, CvSU, for holding these consultations.

We in the government, headed by President Aquino, have spearheaded efforts in improving our country's educational system, both basic education and those of higher education, from gradually implementing K-12 to the socio-cultural integration of the Asean region by 2015, which includes the facilitation of educational exchanges among universities in the region.

With K-12, we have finally caught up with the rest of Asia, being the last in this Continent to implement a twelve-year basic education program. As we all know, we have added subjects on technical-vocational skills, making our high

school graduates fit to take on a job without the need for a college diploma, as well as building stronger foundations in classical liberal education, like the humanities, philosophy, among others, as well as the natural sciences and business. Most noteworthy, perhaps, though maybe not for us since we are Tagalogs, is the introduction of Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTBMLE) in K12, where non-Tagalog and Tagalog children alike can get to have their lessons taught to them in the language closest to their hearts and worlds, the mother language.

Asean integration, of course, is of greater interest to CvSU as an institution of higher learning envisioning itself to be a global university in the coming years. There are present challenges to this vision, but while the tasks may be Herculean, they are not insurmountable.

In the light of its vision of a global university, as well as the upcoming Asean integration, CvSU may have to consider one of its goals its membership in the Asean University Network, or AUN. AUN aims to streamline and facilitate collaboration in research and extension among Asean universities, credit transfer, faculty and student mobility in the region, and contribute to the growing sense of

Southeast Asian identity. So far, only three Philippine universities are part of AUN: the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University, and De La Salle University.

Historically, the modern university is actually an amalgation of two very different institutions in the past: the research center and the teaching institute (or gymnasium). Thus, the modern university having a twofold task, creating knowledge for society and disseminating it through teaching and publication, academic collaboration and exchange between universities are therefore crucial to its continued development as an academic institution, as the exchange of personnel often involves also an exchange in ideas and in research and prevents the intellectual stagnation caused by academic inbreeding. Our universities should quit being archipelagic in mindset and embrace cooperation, rather than the inwardlooking competitive spirit that animates our country's universities.

While it is all the more tempting to synchronize academic calendars with the rest of Southeast Asia, as UP (except the Diliman campus, where it is still being debated), Ateneo de Manila, and UST already did, the calendar shift is controversial and hotly contested (at least in UP). And UP's faculty indeed must be

wary and alarmed. A meeting of UP Diliman's senior faculty explained that a significant number (around 43%) of that university's academic partners do not start classes in September, and that the change itself will not automatically improve its international character, especially when there are more immediate concerns such as the allotment of more faculty time to research and post-graduate instruction and education, not to mention the fact that the present calendar is attuned to our climate, as well as to our culture. Pagasa, furthermore, predicts hotter Aprils and Mays in the coming years, with a maximum increase in temperature of 1.3 degrees in April-May 2020. In the UNESCO-endorsed principles of cross-border higher education, there was not even a mention of synchronization of academic calendars. To my mind, this is one of the few times that the ever-fractious UP Diliman faculty members have a unified stand against what they think is not right.

What is to be done, then? Better government support, mostly in form of greater financial subsidy, to improve the research output of higher education institutions like CvSU, as well as our academic programs. This will help promote the international character of our HEIs more than any synchronization in academic calendars. Greater state subsidy also improves the democratic access to our staterun universities and colleges, eliminating the need for socialized tuition schemes that might prove to be too heavy a burden to our poor students. At present, our

alloted budget for education falls far short of UNESCO-recommended levels, pegged at 6% of the GDP at the very least.

Also, a course or two perhaps, that will provide a Southeast Asian perspective on things might also be taken into consideration, as part of CvSU's commitment to the goals of Asean integration and solidarity. After all, it will be they who our next generation of Filipinos will be dealing with as partners toward a united Southeast Asia.

Let me devote the last part of this speech to philosophical musings on the role of education itself. These are important, in my opinion, if we are not to lose our way obsessing with the techniques and curricula, but miss altogether the pedagogy itself, the practice of which in our country has a mentality that goes back to Spanish times. According to the great Brazilian philosopher of education Paulo Freire, education is and should be a liberating experience. After all our efforts, in the government and in the University administration to provide for our youth the best education that our society can possibly offer, the main bulk of the task of education still lies with the teacher in the classroom. Freire emphasizes this emancipatory aspect of education, and that this educative process should not be a

mere transfer of information, a mere narration by a sole teacher-Subject and the students are just passive objects, receptacles to be filled up and deposited with information. It must be some bland irony for one to teach democratic values in the classroom in an authoritarian manner, not to mention the teacher who after teaching the aforementioned values can be seen by his or her students serving coffee to the principal in the faculty lounge. No, Freire insists, education must be dialogical if it is to liberate. We are in the business of education, of igniting minds alight with critical inquiry, and not just simply subservient automatons who will do as they are told. We are not just training people to be fit for this or that job, we aim to create citizens of our Republic, a truly sovereign people, simply unwilling to pass onto another the task of thinking. This is the basis of our democracy, the very foundation that it needs if it is to be consolidated and deepened in our society. As the educator, mathematician, and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead also said, The function of a university is to enable you to shed details in favor of principles. Cavite State University, the premier state university in this revolutionary Province of Cavite, I am proud to say, have lived up to this noble tradition, and it is my great hope that you will carry this on, along with a deeplyingrained sense of nationalism of the Caviteo patriot, as you march forward to becoming a global University by the next decade.

Thank you very much. Mabuhay kayong lahat and God bless you all!

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