|
Call
to modernise education in regional contest
Planners here
should work to modernise the higher education system in the specific
regional context, not westernise it during the current redevelopment
process.
This point was made by a leading Italian
educationalist, Toni Vendramin, leader of team to organise the Faculty
of Humanities in the Royal University of Phnom Penh.
The faculty was formed with the creation of a
Department of Sociology and upgrading the Department of Philosophy and
merging the two with the Department of History.
The project was undertaken by the
non-governmental organisation, New Humanity, under a 1992 agreement with
the government.
Vendramin said Southeast Asia has an
ancient culture that Cambodia should accept as reference for its
educational programme, especially at university level.
"It is to help Cambodian university
students to see the world from an Asian perspective, understand Asia in
all its activity and to deepen perception of its distinctive values
system.
"Being well versed in Asia's
enlightened thinking, it would be less difficult for them to make
balanced judgments under diversified and extremely complex systems of
different cultures," he explained.
He said the project was not only to analyse the
social, cultural, philosophical, historical and economic dynamics of
Cambodia, but also the same dimensions in the region.
Vendramin said the project was viewed
from a broad perspective.
He said a regional integrated approach in
the national education policy should become a key feature for
modernisation not only for promoting education and culture, but to
prevent Cambodia becoming a victim of arbitrary globalisation.
"An arbitrary globalisation process
is a real danger common to nations on the threshold of technological
progress and global market economy because of the hegemony of political
and economic systems over the elaboration of educational programmes,
especially at university level.
"On the other hand, Cambodia cannot avoid being
pushed by international power towards the prevailing model of economic
development.
"International financial investments cannot
allow Cambodia to achieve modernisation through the kind of reforms and
development that would go in accordance with the times and means of its
culture.
"Instead, the new world order implies
Cambodia has to keep up with the times and accept 'it has to be done
straight away and quickly'.
"The global market economy with the
technological superpowers will not wait for the cultural times of
the people, but become ever more aggressive with arbitrary imposition of
political ideologies and socio-economic systems more suitable to the
market", he added.
Vendramin said such reality placed Cambodians
seeking urgent solutions to immediate problems at the expense of
long-term goals, resulting in discarding human sciences as unproductive.
They might even feel that human sciences would
not suit global market economy and risk unemployment if they pursued
this sector in education.
"That is why the distinct culture of Cambodia,
with its value system, its art, philosophy and history is in danger of
being over whelmed globalisation process imposed on every thing and
everybody by a winning global market economy", he added.
BUSINESS NEWS - November 27 - December 03 , 2000
|
