В Филиппинах готовится закон о ваучерах для перевода учеников из государственных школ в частные

Human Side Of Economics By Bernardo M. Villegas (Part 4) It is in the private schools that the environment is more favorable to the close participation of parents in the education of their children, especially in the Catholic and other religious schools. Unfortunately, over the last decade there has been the so-called “crowding out” phenomenon by which rapid public high school expansion has led to the steady migration of secondary school students away from the private campuses. The Pope makes reference to the financial difficulties faced by parents in sending their children to school: “When a substantial portion of education, at various levels, is entrusted to private institutions, access to schooling may become overly dependent on families’ financial means, especially in the absence of adequate public support.” Fortunately, under the leadership of Pasig Congressman Roman Romulo, a law is about to be passed that will enable pupils from kindergarten to senior high school studying in public schools to transfer to selected private schools through a private education voucher program. In the same way that our government has made a heroic effort to spend at least 5-6% of GDP on infrastructure, the public sector must do everything possible to spend at least 4% of GDP on public education at all levels, as recommended by the Philippine Business for Education. In the face of the continuing shortage of public funding, the Pope says that it is important to acknowledge and encourage the contribution of the many Catholic educational institutions which ensure inclusive access for children and young people of every background, even when families’ economic circumstances would not otherwise allow it. It is in these schools, and others inspired by the Catholic faith and owned and managed by concerned parents, in which parent-school collaboration on the appropriate use of AI and social media can be more easily fostered among the students. These parents-school collaborations can then be replicated in some public schools through the help of apostolic associations of nearby parishes. Because of the great importance being given by Pope Leo XIV to helping the youth of today to derive the greatest benefit from AI and to avoid what could harm them, I suggest that some apostolic associations of parents give a high priority to fostering very close relationships with schools, whether public and private, in this task of helping the Filipino youth navigate their way through the very stormy sea of the Industrial Revolution 4.0. In the same way that a good number of parish-based initiatives by lay people conduct pre-nuptial seminars for couples, there could also be seminars and workshops, given by the experts on AI and social media, offered to parents of pupils of public schools so that the parents will know how to engage public school teachers on the need to closely monitor the use of digital devices of their children. I identify closely with the second challenge mentioned by Pope Leo XIV. He refers to the strictly pedagogical dimension of incorporating AI into the various curricula at different stages of the education of children. My whole professional life of more than 60 years has been devoted to helping educational systems struggle to keep pace with change and to support the integral development of students, as Pope Leo XIV appealed to today’s educators. After returning from my doctoral studies in economics at Harvard, I was tasked by the Ford Foundation, together with my colleagues at the incipient Center for Research and Communication (CRC), to help upskill and retool economics teachers, especially in high school, to improve the teaching of the subject by ensuring their relevance to the development challenges then facing the Philippines. Our country in the 1960s and ’70s was very much a Third World economy — like practically all of our East Asian neighbors. The pedagogical problem then was that the textbooks and teaching materials used by Philippine schools were borrowed from the United States. The most popular textbook for the introductory course in economics was that of Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson that contained very little that could explain Philippine economic realities. With a grant from the Ford Foundation, a team at CRC led by Dr. Jesus Estanislao developed teaching materials in economics based on Philippine macroeconomic and microeconomic realities. I even wrote what became a best-selling textbook in both private and public schools entitled Guide to Economics for Filipinos. Our team covered the various fields of economics with textbooks entitled Economics of a Nation, Economics of a Firm, Economics of an Industry, Philippine Economic Development, etc. Over and above writing textbooks, the Ford Foundation funded numerous seminars and workshops for economics teachers at both the high school and college levels. These efforts eventually led to our offering a full blown masteral program leading to a Master in Economics Education. Many of the products of this masteral program became deans of economics departments in Philippine colleges and universities, and top economics teachers in Philippine high schools and colleges. In the 1980s and ’90s, a similar pedagogical phenomenon occurred. As some of our East Asian neighbors grew their economies by leaps and bounds, becoming what eventually were labelled “the tiger economies” (e.g., Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea), some of our leading educators (including those who led the then Department of Education, Culture and Sports) did some soul searching and concluded that our youth lacked the virtues and values that were possessed by our East Asian neighbors, such as attention to details, punctuality, concern for the common good, etc. Many schools started to offer values education subjects which required teachers specialized in Values Education. Our school, which by then had already evolved into the University of Asia and the Pacific, decided to lead in the offering of seminars and workshops on values education which also gave way to a full blown masteral degree in values education. I am, therefore, appealing to the leading Philippine universities, such as the University of the Philippines, the Ateneo University, my alma mater De La Salle University, and the University of Santo Tomas, among others, to respond to the challenge from Pope Leo XIV to help in upskilling, reskilling, and retooling Philippine educators at all levels in the field of artificial intelligence. It could be part of their corporate social responsibility for these well financially endowed universities to help teachers in the public schools learn the appropriate use of AI to benefit their pupils and to prevent whatever harm AI may inflict on them. We at the University of Asia and the Pacific will contribute our modest share, as we had done in the past in the fields of economics education and values education. I would like to cite here the positive role that the De La Salle-College of St. Benilde (DLS-CSB) School of Management and Information Technology is playing in ensuring that gaming fosters creativity, collaboration, technical innovation, and problem solving in the education of children, as explained in a column in this paper by Norman Lee, Chairman of the Commission on Higher Education’s Technical Panel for Game Development and Animation. I am glad that Mr. Lee was quick to respond to the knee jerk reaction of some concerned parents that video games could explain the behavior of the youth behind the school shooting in Tacloban that led to the death of three students. Through his work as an educator and researcher at DLS-CSB, Mr. Lee has built game development education in the Philippines and has verified that there is little to no evidence to support the claim that playing video games directly causes real-world criminal violence. In fact, the Philippine game development industry has grown into a respected creative sector that has spawned opportunities in game development, software engineering, design, and other creative fields in which Filipinos have a competitive advantage. (To be continued.) Read Part 1: The impact of artificial intelligence on the youth — https://tinyurl.com/23f4e4v4 Part 2: The impact of artificial intelligence on the youth: Restricting social media — https://tinyurl.com/2638ezga Part 3: The impact of artificial intelligence on the youth : The role of parents — https://tinyurl.com/294wozaa Bernardo M. Villegas has a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard, is professor emeritus at the University of Asia and the Pacific, and a visiting professor at the IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain. He was a member of the 1986 Constitutional Commission.