Brown Soul

It’s a sad but good reflection on the wrong priorities and focus of millions of Filipinos going abroad. While we look for TRINKETS and TOYS (or goods for pasalubong and beautify our image), the Indians, Chinese, Japanese, and the Koreans would go to the West and gather TOOLS to equip themselves by getting the best education in the great learning institutes so they could invent a new mobile phone, design a new car, or create their own business at home.

The Institute for International Education released their 2007 report on the ranking of the different countries with foreign origin in the college schools/universities in the West:

Rank Place of Origin
1 India 83,833

2 China 67,723

3 Korea 62,392

4 Japan 35,282

5 Taiwan 29,094

6 Canada

7 Mexico

8 Turkey

9 Thailand 8,886

10 Germany

11 United Kingdom

12 Saudi Arabia 7,886

13 Nepal 7,754

14 Hong Kong 7,722

15 Indonesia 7,338

16 Brazil

17 Colombia

18 France

19 Kenya

20 Vietnam 6,036

21 Malaysia

22 Nigeria

23 Pakistan

24 Russia

25 Venezuela

Notice that the leading countries are from Asia with almost 50% from the list being Asian countries.
Where is the Philippines on this list?

Nepal is a very small country and yet would make sure they have at least 7,000 citizens in the best schools in the West. And so would Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, and even African countries such as Kenya and Nigeria.

On the other hand, we probably have millions living, or coming in and out of the West but how many dreams of having a doctorate in Harvard? Or a Masters degree in MIT? We do have dreams yet our AMERICAN DREAM is somehow disorientated and has no large impact.

Sad but true, the perception of a Filipino today is a striking contrast during the time of Rizal when Filipinos in Europe were referred to as “the glory of the universities” Continue...

In Kishore Mahbubani’s book, The New Asian Hemisphere, he writes that there are two historical epochs taking place now in the 21st century: One, the end of Western domination. Mahbubani was not the first guy to say this. Roger Cohen of the International Herald Tribune noted it early this year with his article: The end of the era of the white man.

But there is another wave taking place today according to the Singaporean-Indian sage: THE RENAISSANCE OF ASIAN SOCIETIES. It is now the age of “Incredible India,” “Sparkling Korea” and “Malaysia truly Asia.”By 2010, he said, 90% of Phd holding scientists all over the world will now all be in Asia.

And the Philippines?

In the 1950s, the Philippines was the most dynamic economy in Asia - hailed by the World Bank as a future powerhouse. Half a century later the country is, in the words of Rommel Banlaoi, a political-science professor at the National Defense College, "the sick man of Asia“.


A Filipino resident in Singapore reveals that in the National University of Singapore, they are already teaching what the role is of the Philippines in the international community. It is not to produce scientists like India, nor to produce cars like Japan, nor to produce Olympians like China, but to produce DOMESTIC HELPERS for the world.

880,000 Filipinos leave the country every year in pursuit of more gainful employment abroad. They're laying pipelines in Siberia, mining diamonds in Angola and sailing ships in all the world's oceans. They clean thousands of homes a day from Hong Kong to Dubai to London; Bahrain's prime minister employs some 50 Filipinos in his own household (Philippines: Workers for the World, Newsweek, Oct.4, 2006)

• The Philippines is currently the world’s leading exporter of nurses, with 164,000 or 85% of the country’s trained nurses are working abroad, with doctors becoming nurses.

Nowhere is this emerging problem more pressing than in the medical sector. Dr Jaime Galvez-Tan, professor of the University of the Philippines' College of Medicine and a former secretary of the government's Department of Health (DOH), says the Philippines is currently the world's leading exporter of nurses. About 164,000 nurses, or 85% of the country's trained total, are working outside the Philippines. Out of this number, about 100,000 have left the Philippines in the past 10 years.

• About 200 hospitals have recently closed down across the country because of a lack of doctors and nurses with another 800 hospitals considered to be “partially closed” due to the lack of qualified health personnel

• The Filipino youth and students are uneducated, indebted, and hungry:
1 in 10 Filipinos has never gone to school (6.8 million)
1 in 6 Filipinos is not functionally literate (9.6 million)
4.1 million are illiterate
11.6 million youth are out-of-school
51% of Filipinos had at most elementary education
(The State of the Philippine Education, Freedom from Debt Coalition, July 25, 2006)

• Last 2006, the National Career Assessment Examination showed that out of the 1.3 million examinees, only 3.7%, or 49,066 students, are fit to enter college.

• The Philippines is No. 41 in Science and No. 42 in Mathematics among 45 countries.

Until we come to terms with who we are, our identity, our roots and heritage…the rise of Asia will never include the Philippines.

Sources:
Philippines: Workers for the World, Newsweek, Oct.4, 2006
The State of the Philippine Education, Freedom from Debt Coalition, July 25, 2006
Sick Man of Asia, Asia Times Online
Brain Drain Saps the Economy, Asia Times Online
High-school grads advised: Go tech-voc, www.manilatimes.net
Philippine Public Education – A Situationer, Independent Media Center Continue...