For PH SCUs To Teach Youth Sustainability In Agriculture, Teach Entrepreneurship Like So!

I Asian teacher am a little bit bewildered by the would-be sustainability lesson from Brajesh Panth, Chief of the ADB Education Sector Group, titled “3 Ways Asia Can Inspire Learning Through Skills, Tech[1],” link shared on Facebook 24 February 2020 by Shahia Salah. Although this is a 1-year old article and problematic, its content is relevant today – we need more inspiration and instructions for PH youth in Agriculture. 

So, Secretary of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie has eyes on Schools, Colleges & Universities, SCUs, teaching the youth entrepreneurship in agriculture. So, the SCUs must improve their education systems like Mr Panth is talking about:

Education Systems should focus on preparing human resources that are resilient, enduring, and continuously trainable, anchored on a mindset of entrepreneurship, innovativeness, creativity and sustainability.

Impressive. But, Mr Panth, that is much too much to ask!

Mr Panth, you mention entrepreneurship, innovativeness, creativity and sustainability in one breath as mind goals for graduates, and I cannot swallow that hook, line & sinker. In fishing, we have to be careful with our baits.

You’re talking essentially about education for college students, and you want their curriculums, whatever their fields, to instill in those heads the single mindset that equals:

A complex being who thinks like a businessman who at the same time thinks like an artist who at the same time thinks like an inventor who at the same time thinks like a manager intent on sustainability!

We are in The Digital Age, a magical age, but I do not believe that Big Minds working on Big Data can churn out a robot resembling a graduate with such complex of thinking!

Instead, let me restate and simplify your paragraph list:

Education systems should cultivate any of these learners’ attributes: Entrepreneurship (being business-minded), Innovativeness (being original), Creativity (solving problems or discovering potentials) – always on top of Sustainability of Resources.

As much as possible. To be an entrepreneur, you need to be innovative and creative, given that whatever you come up with must be sustainable, that is: technically feasible, economically viable, environmentally sound, and socially acceptable. No Sir, modern entrepreneurship is not that simple.

Mr Panth, yes:

Countries in the region can benefit tremendously from leveraging technology to inform education and job training.

So much technologies for teaching! But how to teach via online and offline is the crux of the matter.

Now, as a teacher and a self-styled digital science writer, editor, desktop publisher and proselytizer, I hereby say I do not see this that you see:

The technological revolution has brought tremendous opportunities, but also fears in the developing world that it will displace human workers with automation and artificial intelligence (AI).

Mr Panth, you have been reading too much commentaries! My argument against AI taking over the world borrows from you:

Robots can never be programmed to learn, much less master, entrepreneurship, innovativeness, creativity and sustainability.

Forget the robots, but not sustainability. In agriculture & related fields, it is in the youth that our SCUs must cultivate our hopes!@517

---

[1] https://blogs.adb.org/blog/3-ways-asia-can-inspire-learning-through-skills-tech?fbclid=IwAR2NDd1izraWEpLA-g-vvdnBrGZxjd16GpulqOJq3jfThrTN1pttJz9HzNQ