How PH Youths Can Become Literally & Figuratively The Hopes Of The Fatherland

Executive Director Cinderella Filipina Benitez-Jaro of the Commission on Higher Education, CHEd, has appointed SEARCA Director Glenn B Gregorio as Chair of the CHEd Technical Panel for Agriculture, TPA (Leander C Domingo, 20 August 2020, “CHEd Picks SEARCA Head For HEIs Agri Curriculum Reforms,” The Manila Times).

This is going to be Educational Reform from the Top.
And it is not going to be easy.

I’m very much interested because I am also an educator, and I can see that there is much that needs to be changed to improve higher education instruction – to meet the demands of the times.

As to the members of the TPA, the academe is represented by Candida Adalla and Domingo Angeles, 2 former Deans of the College of Agriculture, UPLB; and Danilo Abayon, former President of Aklan State University. The industry is represented by Nikole Ma Nimfa Alicer, farmer and founder of Kalipayan Farms. Aimee Lyn Dupo, Professor at the UPLB Institute of Biological Sciences, is technical evaluator.

Mr Gregorio (says) he welcomes the challenge to lead efforts in reforming the agriculture (curricula) in the country’s higher education institutions (HEIs) to make (each part) more relevant to the present and future job markets in the Philippines and abroad. (With a little editing)

Mr Gregorio elaborates:

As agriculture remains a major engine of economic development in most Southeast Asian countries, HEIs are in a strategic position to pursue projects and initiatives related to food and nutrition security and their agility in designing their curricular and extension programs to produce professionals who can actively (assist) in achieving food and nutrition security goals.

The speaker introduces a new term there: “extension programs.” In reforming the curricula of the HEIs, the Education Program must be reformed along with the Extension Program. Personally, what I have observed in my alma mater the University of the Philippines Los Baños, UPLB, is that there are hardly any extension programs – when in fact, UPLB is supposed to have a triad of functions:

Instruction,
Research, and
Extension.

Mr Gregorio’s appointment may be surprising to many, as SEARCA is Southeast Asia-wide while CHEd is only Philippine-wide – but that is exactly the beauty of it, as Mr Gregorio will look at Philippine education in terms of Southeast Asia. He has worked with IRRI and outside the Philippines; his perspective is wider and should be enriching.

The CHEd said it has appointed new technical panel members in the fields of public administration and agriculture to carry out the mandate of the Commission to harness the equal representation of the academe, government and industry in curriculum reform and ensure that academic programs produce the… manpower for local and international needs.

I note: “To harness the equal representation of the academe, government and industry” – this indicates to me that the new CHEd graduates may be valuable to the HEIs themselves, the government, or the industry. I therefore imagine the graduates to have a mindset of entrepreneurship. The way I see it is this:

The entrepreneurial youth are the hopes of the Fatherland!@517