Speeding up Education in ASEAN (IB & IGCSE approach)

 International education today is not a fad anymore but a necessity for international relations and business for every country.  Countries who are trying to isolate themselves in the world market has a higher chance of losing economic opportunity in the international market.  As of this time ASEAN region is one of the lucrative region in Asia due to its untouched natural resources.  

  

One concern of the ASEAN resources is its Human Resources that in general ASEAN resources for manpower are still lagging behind compared to other countries. As higher education is the urgent need for international business operations, human resources in ASEAN regions are already in bad shape in catching the modern concepts and research from other parts of the world.  

In terms of university and academic programs in ASEAN, the usual “school feeding” and memorizing the test answers are still the old fashion concept of education the students.  But in reality application of knowledge from university to the actual modern business environment is far more unrealistic.  As such, an urgent concern for all the education related professionals to re-think the program and curriculums of our university if it is still effective in the modern approach of learning.  Even if both teachers and students are brilliant in terms of the educational discipline but the core concepts and framework of the educational curriculum in ASEAN are far related to the modern educational approach like the IB and IGCSE concept then ASEAN learning is simply memorizing without understanding.

Some ASEAN member countries are revising their educational system between IB and IGCSE.  The questions of many educators, is why we need to copy and relate the concept of IB and IGCSE.  If we review roughly the motive of the curriculum, IB and IGCSE are both student centered approach that the teacher or professor will have a concept of evaluating each student.  Such that, student learning and skills are unique so as with their future skill effectiveness in their work place.  It is so silly sometimes that many ASEAN program coordinators are looking the pre semester planning as a uniform approach.

TO GIVE AN ANALOGY AGAIN:

(Traditional Education)

We can relate the old education system as to the “FORD Model-T” long time ago.  As the history of cars reveal that Model-T has only one color and one design in which the buyer don’t have a choice for their own taste and like.  Same with the traditional education, all the students must “memorize the answer” and give the answer during the exam and of course the student will get A grade without any understanding on how to apply the theory concept learned in the university to the actual job site of the HR.

(Customize Education)

On the contrary, the modern concept of learning and education today are based from the student or “STUDENT CENTERED EDUCATION” which means that the teacher or instructor must know each student’s strength and weaknesses related to the subject and relate it to the exact assessment to his or her career path. In such manner, students will not have a hard time in finding his or her job specification.  The concept of IB and IGCSE is similar to the modern car makers today that every car unit is CUSTOMIZE according to the preference of the buyer.

Finally, the reason why many ASEAN countries are following the pattern of education from the Western countries it is because as Asians we lack CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS during our actual job.  We are good only when somebody will tell us what to do but to think for the good of the company’s business operation. I believe ASEAN HR needs more time in its learning curve in terms of higher education.  But the actual present problem is we don’t have so much time.  The future is now and we need customized and more personalized educational system in ASEAN to cater the unique emergence of high technology business operations problems in many international companies today who are investing in ASEAN region.

THE FUTURE IS NOW AND WE NEED TO SPEED-UP OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM.  DO YOU THINK OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM IN ASEAN HAS ITS “TURBO” AND “NITRO” TO COMPETE WITH WESTERN ACADEMIC RESEARCH?

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