Education in crisis

Professor Tan Sri Dato' Dzulkifli Abdul Razak
Learning Curve: Perspective
New Sunday Times - 06-10-2013

TAKE THE LEAD: Tertiary institutions can play a more meaningful transformational role so that humanity can be assured of a better place in the new civilisation

AFTER making its mark on the world through technology and culture, Seoul, South Korea has also outlined its vision of civilisational transformation.

Kyung Hee University has hosted the Peace BAR Festival to mark the United Nations International Day of Peace on Sept 21 since 1982.

The event aims to create a 21st century society that is "spiritually Beautiful, materially Affluent, humanly Rewarding" (BAR). Largely inspired by its visionary founder Dr. Choue Young Seek, who died early last year, the festival celebrates humanity's efforts to overcome conflict and work towards peace and mutual prosperity.

Under the auspices of the Global Academy for Future Civilisation established in 2005, the focus in the last few years is on civilisational dimensions.

While the festival recognises that modern civilisation offers a more affluent and comfortable lifestyle, it also realises that "blind pursuit of technological progress, without concern for norms and ethics, combined with overheated competition and material borne of a market economy put our humanity at risk and degraded our nature".

While we are richer in material terms, we lose the qualities that make us human, given the tides of globalisation and hegemonic delusions of limitless prosperity and growth.

It is indeed refreshing that this acute awareness comes from a relatively young university in a fairly newly developed economy because it brings the issue of "being human" and endowed with conscience and consciousness back in the spotlight.

As such the long neglected problems of ethics, morality and principles can take their rightful place in the scheme of things or else we may risk a collapse of another civilisation, not just another institution or company despite the clichéd "too big to fail"!

Themed Higher Education and Civilisation, this year's festival coincided with the 60th anniversary of the Korean War.

One of the keynote speeches titled Universities in Times of Civilisation Transformation -- Challenges And Responsibility pointed out the fact that the higher education system itself is in a state of a crisis.

It is equally embroiled in the "blind pursuit of technological progress". In fact, South Korea is beginning to be concerned that its social make-up is becoming less egalitarian.

It is not surprising despite sophisticated knowledge and advances in technology that the threat to humanity is even more real as our values systems -- upon which our civilisation depends -- are continuously being destroyed. The spillover is the human-made ecological devastation we see daily.

On top of this, signs of social decay abound, ranging from the level and frequency of violence to disenchantment -- including with education -- across the world, giving rise to the number of suicides, for example.

The World Health Organization reported that almost one million people die from suicide every year, a "global" mortality rate of 16 per 100,000 or one death every 40 seconds.

The world of education, too, is in a state of emergency. Austrian-born American physicist F. Capra says "the sources of our cultural crisis" are the result of "outdated conceptual models and irrelevant variables" used by most of our leading thinkers, and leaders.

Capra adds: "Most academics subscribe to narrow perceptions of reality which are inadequate for dealing with the major problems of our time.

"These problems... are systemic problems, which mean that they are closely interconnected and interdependent. They cannot be understood within the fragmented methodology characteristic of our academic disciplines and government agencies."

By implication, if educational leadership and knowledge systems remain unchanged, impending collapse is only a matter of time. Some of the significance of this has been discussed previously (Learning Curve, Sept 29) and this has to do with the way knowledge is structured and acquired as the basis of the so-called "modern" civilisation.

Therein lays the challenges of higher education institutions in creating new and better civilisations for the future.

Kyung Hee University is exemplary in this regard. It has taken the lead so that tertiary institutions can play a more meaningful transformational role so that humanity can be assured of a better place in the new civilisation.

But we need commitment to change the future of education.

- The writer presented one of the keynote addresses at the Peace BAR Festival in Seoul, South Korea.