Let us take the case of the Business Process Outsourcing  (BPO) sector.  After listening to Mr. Ramon Dimacali about how K + 12 can be partly channeled to the needs of the BPO sector in the coming five years or so, I am making the following proposal.  Some of the students in the last two years called senior high school could be advised to prepare for a career in the BPO sector.  They can receive subjects that are tailored to the requirements of this industry, especially the voice-oriented contact centers.  They would receive more intensive classes in oral and conversational English as well as subjects on information technology that will make them familiar with the typical equipment in call centers.  Unlike their classmates who are preparing for university programs or for technical courses, they need not have as many science or math subjects.  For those preparing for non-voice BPO careers that do not require a professional degree, such as animation, encoding, drafting, etc. they can also receive the appropriate subjects that would give the basic preparation for these non-voice skills in the BPO sector.

After graduating from senior high school, these students should be encouraged to enroll, not in a university or college course, but in TESDA-certified courses that can revive the old Associate in Arts (AA) degree of the past.  These courses could last from one year to two years and should preferably be patterned after the Dualtech system popularized by the German foundations through such very successful technical schools as the Dualtech School in Canlubang and Binondo or the Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE) in Cebu.  These schools partner with business enterprises that give on-the-job training or apprenticeship opportunities to the students simultaneously with their classroom training.  I am sure that this system that has worked very well for such leading corporations as Toyota, Lufthansa Technik, Motorola, Hitachi, etc., can be adapted by BPO enterprises. There are actually BPO enterprises partnering with some universities in the upgrading of the skills of their employees.

How do we address the challenge posed by John Dewey?  How do we make sure that these high school graduates who have been fast-tracked into jobs in the BPO sector or other technical occupations still receive the liberal arts education needed by every citizen to live a full life in today’s highly modern society?  Let us continue to quote from Mr. Roth about what Dewey considered a holistic education for everyone, not just for those who have gone to universities:  “The kind of vocational education in which I am interested is not one which will ‘adapt’ workers to the existing industrial regime; I am not sufficiently in love with the regime for that.”   Dewey insisted that schools first and foremost should teach citizens habits of learning.  These habits would include awareness of our interdependence; nobody is all knowing.  He also talked about “plasticity,” an openness to being shaped by experience:  “The inclination to learn from life itself and to make the conditions of life such that all will learn in the process of living is the finest product of schooling.”  Fortunately, Dewey recognized the fact that the inclination to learn from life can be taught, not only from a liberal arts curriculum, but also in schools that focus on real-world skills, from engineering to nursing.   As Mr. Roth comments:  “The key is to develop habits that allow students to keep learning, even as they acquire skills to get things done.  This combination will serve students as individuals and citizens – not just as employees and managers.”

The Church and civil society can do much to help technical workers who have not gone to a university to continue acquiring the wisdom, knowledge, and skills that help them achieve what is known as integral human development.  Especially manned by the laity, centers for the  continuing education of workers in the most important disciplines which will give them the opportunity to find “large and human significance” in their lives and work can be established.  These centers should give priority to the teaching of philosophy and theology.  They can be attached to parishes or dioceses.  They can be initiatives of lay associations like Couples for Christ, Legion of Mary, and other apostolic movements.  They should devote more time and resources to the spreading of authentic Christian doctrine, which is a very important part of a truly liberal arts education.  In the same way that there have been many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have been addressing the problem of material  poverty, volunteer organizations can increasingly focus on another kind of poverty:  the poverty of  knowledge and culture among those who have had limited education in the liberal arts.

Private business can play a major role here.  Those enterprises who employ the products of technical or vocational education can invest in in-house human resource development programs that can provide the education in the humanities that was missed by their employees.  I still remember the example of SGV in the 1970s.  The Managing Director then, Mr. Roberto Ongpin, was concerned that some accountants of those days were too narrowly schooled in their specialized skills and lacked a liberal arts education.  At the company’s expense, lecturers from the University of the Philippines and other universities in such subjects as literature, fine arts, history, economics, etc., were contracted to give in-house courses to the employees, using company time.  I was one of the lecturers.  I still meet products of that program, who have reached high levels of management in Philippine business, who express a deep gratitude to SGV for that concern.  Another example I would like to cite is that of Hitachi Global of today that spent on an in-house program in partnership with the University of Batangas and the Technical University of the Philippines to complete the engineering education of their employees who never got an undergraduate degree in engineering because of meager incomes of their parents.

With ingenuity and  political resolve, it is possible then to address the immediate problem of supplying the manpower needs of such sunrise industries as the BPO, tourism, health, and manufacturing sectors through fast-tracking the students of the last two years in the K + 12 system while at the same time addressing the egalitarian issue of giving every Filipino citizen an opportunity to acquire a holistic education that is required by integral human development.  For comments, my e-mail address is bernardo.villegas@uap.asia.