A 31 March 2015 Commencement
Address by Atty. Edwin D. Bael
The Honorable President of the
Bukidnon State University, Dr. Oscar B. Cabaneles,
The Members of the BSU Board of
Regents,
The pioneering President of this
university, Dr. Jaime M. Gellor and Lady Rosemary Gellor,
Regent and President of the Student
Council, Miss Angelica May Fortin, who brought me in for this privilege of
speaking with you.
Vice President Dr. Estela C. Itaas,
other officers and the TEACHERS of this respected university,
Guests, Parents, graduates,
students, friends, ladies and gentlemen,
Mga kaigsoonan, mga kahigalaan:
Maayong buntag ug maayong kinabuhi!
Thank you Professor Lina Hidalgo
for your kind introduction.
May I first seize this opportunity
to express heartfelt congratulations to the Bukidnon State University for
holding these annual commencement exercises, now for the 81st time…
for 81 years this hallowed institution has been releasing graduates upon
Bukidnon, upon Mindanao, the Philippines and the rest of the world.
Parents, relatives, teachers,
school administrators, congratulations! After years of sacrifice and support,
you are now ready to unleash these fresh graduates upon a hyper-connected world,
marked by accelerating change – where the speed at which information doubles is
getting faster and faster, now changing every 1-2 years, meaning that our stock
knowledge gets outdated every one to two years… where multiple career changes
have become common… and where we still expect a stable and reliable source of
income from these new graduates… presumably, we expect them to be agile and
flexible life-long learners who keep on updating their capabilities for social
inclusion, active citizenship, and personal development, to include keeping up
their competitiveness and employability, thus enabling them to adjust to
unfolding situations, to prevail, and to prosper, despite the varying speeds of
change…. and despite the enlargement of the pool of direct competitors from the
nine other ASEAN member-countries, namely: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malays ia, Myanmar (Burma), Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Or are we here loading too heavy a
weight of expectations upon our graduates, even as we remind them of the waters
beginning to boil in our national political scene for the 2016 contests, of the
ASEAN decision to proceed with regional unification in the political, economic
and the socio-cultural communities, and of the palpable shift of the global
power balance into a multipolar world?
And we are to consider these, in
light of our theme for today’s exercises, perhaps as directed by the Commission
on Higher Education, which is “Enhancing ASEAN Regional Collaboration in
Education”. The topic assumes there is already regional collaboration in
education that all but needs to be enhanced. That is true.
The ASEAN Education
Ministers is the "collective entity to enhance regional cooperation in education". This collective
entity has determined four priorities for education: (1) Promoting ASEAN
awareness among ASEAN citizens, particularly the youth; (2) Strengthening ASEAN
identity through education; (3) Building ASEAN human resources in the field of
education; and (4) Strengthening the ASEAN University Network. Members, like Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, have
experienced rapid development in education over the past 20 years. ASEAN
initiatives plan to interconnect the member-countries' unique human and
physical infrastructure to provide youth education, to sustain economic growth for the entire
region. Various programs and projects have been and are currently in the
process of being developed to fulfill these directives and to reach these
future goals.
The ASEAN Education
Ministers Meeting, which meets annually, oversees ASEAN co-operation efforts on
education at the ministerial level. With regard to implementation, programs and
activities are carried out by the ASEAN Senior Officials Meeting on Education
(SOM-ED). SOM-ED also manages co-operation on higher education through the ASEAN University Network (AUN).
The ASEAN University
Network (AUN) was established to (1) promote co-operation among ASEAN scholars,
academics, and scientists in the region; (2) develop academic and professional
human resources in the region; (3) promote information dissemination among the
ASEAN academic community; and (4) enhance the awareness of a regional identity
and the sense of "ASEAN-ness" among members.
For example, Batangas State University in the Philippines, is encouraging its faculty members, who are engineers by
profession, to apply as an "ASEAN engineer" through the ASEAN
Engineering Register (AER). The AER has spearheaded the mobility of engineers
within ASEAN since 1998. As a result, seven (7) Mechanical Engineers and two
(2) Industrial Engineers of the university were conferred the designation as
ASEAN Engineers. The new president of Batangas State University was the first
engineer in the province of Batangas to be named an ASEAN Engineer. This
initiative is in line with the ASEAN Secretarial Program for the liberalisation
of professional services which aims for globalisation under the World Trade
Organisation (WTO) initiative.
All these actions are undertaken so
as to be consistent with the six ASEAN Strategic thrusts, namely: 1. Economic transformation; 2. People
empowerment and engagement; 3. Innovation; 4. Infrastructure development; 5.
Human capital development; and 6. Bridging the digital divide.
I
would submit that we here in BSU can enhance ASEAN regional collaboration in
education by paying attention to these six strategic thrusts as we live our
daily lives. It boils down to our capabilities to think critically and
imaginatively, if we are to be empowered and engaged, to be developed as human
capital, to bring innovations and thus economic transformation and
infrastructure build-up as well as to bridge divides including the digital
type.
Albert
Einstein observed that: "Education is what remains
after one has forgotten everything he learned in school." For life, out
there after proper schooling, is really a matter of wisdom and imagination.
"Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the life-long attempt to
acquire it", Einstein avers, adding that this life-long attempt acquires
more meaning with imagination, because, he said: “Imagination is more important
than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world",
and because: "The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent or
absorbing positive knowledge."
The
skills and competencies we acquire in school ought to be accompanied with a
continuing effort to use our imaginations, to gain wisdom, and to act for the
welfare of Inang Bayan.
If
we do these, then we can say we are on the way to fulfilling Dr. Jose Rizal’s
prediction in the El Filibusterismo
that “the future of the Philippines will be beautiful because it will be in
loving hands.”
Then
we can help bring to reality Dr. Rizal’s magnificent obsession and dream, as he
wrote in the Ultimo Adios: “My dreams
when scarcely a lad adolescent, my dreams when a young man filled with vigor,
were to see you one day, jewel of the sea of the orient, the dark eyes dry, the
smooth forehead held high unbent, without frown, without wrinkle, without
shades of blushing color.”
This
dream sees Inang Bayan standing with
dignity among the community of nations without frown (no reasons to doubt);
without wrinkle (no reasons to fear); and without blushing colors (no reasons
to be ashamed of anything). That is the dream and the vision we, here and now,
are challenged to help actualize; a vision that shall enable our nation to
effectively engage in whatever regional collaboration that might be needed –
collaborations that call for cool, confident critical thinking.
In the conclusion of
his Letter to the Maidens of Malolos, Dr. Rizal extolled critical thinking,
which should characterize every well-educated person. He said: “May your desire
to educate yourself be fulfilled; and may it be that in the garden of life’s
learning you gather not bitter withered fruit, but that you choose well what
you pick: thinking it out first, tasting before swallowing, because here on
earth all are mixed, and it is not unusual for the enemy to plant destructive
weeds together with the good seeds in the middle of your cultivated plot.”
With this kind of
thinking, we can proceed with our nation’s inexorable march to progress as Dr.
Rizal indicated in the Chorus of his Himno
a Talisay: “Hail, Talisay (Filipinas), firm and constant, always advancing,
you shall prosper. You, triumphant, all elements – sea, land and air – you
shall master.”
Ladies and gentlemen,
dear graduates of 2015, with our learnings seasoned with constant search for
wisdom, use of imagination, and application of critical thinking, while keeping
in mind the ASEAN’s six strategic thrusts, we can also help enhance regional
cooperation in education by righting our nation’s moral keel. By doing so, we
bring to pass that unconquerable faith written by Jose Rizal in his poem Mi Retiro: “And I have faith, and I hope
it must shine one day, when the force of idea conquers the brutality of force,
that after the struggle and the protracted agony, a voice other than mine, more
sonorous, more happy, will know how to sing the triumphal song perforce.”
Yes, “victory is the
child of struggle, joy blossoms from suffering, and redemption is a product of
sacrifice” Dr. Rizal clarified in his essay Como
se Gobiernan en Filipinas.
Thus, forged in
struggle, suffering and sacrifice, we look to our country transforming and
unfolding unto a nation that continually adjusts to circumstances and
overcomes: in unity, solidarity, self-esteem, mutual respect, goodwill,
cooperation, confidence, calmness, and abiding joy.
With these
characteristics we shall definitely enhance our nation’s collaboration with
other ASEAN member-states in education and in other fields.
In closing, it is
suggested that we transcend the inward-looking, conflict-prone orientation and
prevailing value of “akin”/”amin” or “mine”/”my group’s”, and move up to the
unifying and transforming higher value of “atin” or “ours”. This transcendence
would align our TEA – thoughts, emotions, actions – with the one and only motto
that Jose Rizal proposed to his contemporaries in Madrid, Spain, like Graciano
Lopez Jaena, Marcelo H del Pilar, and others. That motto was: “For the
well-being of the Motherland”. From this perspective, we stand with our
brothers and sisters in the ASEAN whose regional motto is: “One Vision, One
Identity, One Community”.
Daghan kaayong
salamat.
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