How To Groom Intellectuals For The Future? Two Contrasting Views From Thailand & Sri Lanka

By W A Wijewardena –January 29, 2018

Two views to groom intellectuals for the 21st century

Two intellectual discourses have recently taken place in Thailand and in Sri Lanka, one month apart from each other, relating to the development of intellectuals in the respective countries for the 21st century.

The first was an address by Professor Worsak Kanok-Nukulchai, President of the Asian Institute of Technology, popularly known as AIT, before the Royal Society of Thailand or RST in December 2017. The title of Worsak’s address was ‘Grooming the Intellectuals to be Global Citizens in the 21st Century’.

 

The other was a discourse delivered by young and daring media person Chapa Bandara in two sessions, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon, before a group of students reading for a special degree in economics at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura or USJ in January 2018. The theme of Chapa’s multilogue with students was the state of Sri Lanka’s economy today and the future economic strategies to be adopted.

A summary of Worsak’s discourse is presented in his FaceBook page. Chapa’s two sessions could be accessed at YouTube:
And

 

A common goal for Thailand and Sri Lanka

Both Thailand and Sri Lanka have the same economic goal today. That is to become a rich country within the next generation. Of course, Thailand with a per capita GDP of slightly more than $ 6000 and categorised as an upper middle income country, has started the race much ahead of Sri Lanka. In contrast, Sri Lanka is still at the threshold of joining that group with a per capita income of about $ 3900.

Thailand is fast becoming an industrial powerhouse with about 20% of its manufactured exports representing high-tech exports in 2015 according to World Bank data. The comparable figure for Sri Lanka is a little less than 1%. Hence, the challenge for Thailand is to consolidate its power in the export market. Sri Lanka is just an infant in this trade and, therefore, has to first crawl on knees before starting to walk on its two feet. But, there is a promise for Sri Lanka.

That is due to the inclusiveness of technology, which the futurist Peter Diamandis has called ‘democratisation of digitisation’. Accordingly, an infant today can rise quickly on its feet and start running along with other racers without waiting for so many years to get itself ready for the race.

Framing the educational policy vs. micro treatment of students 

The audience addressed by Chapa had consisted of undergraduates at USJ who in the education industry are called ‘throughputs’. A firm in the industry like USJ takes students as throughputs, subjects them to a transformation within the institution during a specified study period and releases those throughputs as ‘intellectuals’ to society.

Hence, the guest lecture arranged by USJ with Chapa is a midway treatment of the throughputs similar to the injection of muscle-growing hormones to broiler chicken by a poultry farmer. In economics, it is called micro-treatment.

In contrast, the discourse of Worsak before RST is to educate those in Thailand who are charged with the task of deciding on the methodology and technology to be used to transform the throughputs to be taken by all the higher educational institutions in the country. Thus, Worsak’s attempt was to enlighten the country’s top policy makers as to how they should frame the future education policy of the country.

In this article, we look at Worsak’s wisdom. In the next one, we look at that of Chapa.

Worsak, the highly qualified engineer turned academic 

Worsak became the President of AIT, a position equivalent to that of the Vice Chancellor of USJ, in 2014. He is an engineer who had his undergraduate training at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. He completed a Master’s degree in engineering at AIT and a doctorate in the same subject at the University of California, Berkley.

Before becoming the President, he had held numerous positions at AIT including the post of the Dean of the School of Engineering.

Worsak is a fellow member of RST which has a history of close to 100 years. It is the national academy of Thailand that advices the government on academic matters. Hence, his education of fellow RST members will certainly help Thailand to frame its future education policy to meet the requirements of an emerging era.

From digital natives to global citizens

Worsak has presented the concept of ‘global citizen’, the emerging trend that unifies the peoples of the world. The present young generation, according to him, are ‘digital natives’ who are to evolve into global citizens one day.

Of course, this is not the first attempt or the first tactic used to unify the peoples of the world. As documented by Yuval Noah Harari in his Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, there had been three other attempts at unifying peoples of diverse origin and dispersion through money, empires and religion.

The new attempt at doing so has been the modern technology which has created a completely different Homo sapiens. According to Worsak, a gap between the educators and students has arisen in the new digital age ruled by students categorised as digital natives.

Digital natives more inclined to use the web

In his FaceBook page, Worsak has noted: “Many students of current generation, known as “digital natives”, keep wondering why they are expected to take notes in the classroom when they can acquire the same knowledge directly and comprehensively from the web. In fact, some students today are using their mobile phones to search and verify teacher’s contents on the screen. Any university that refuses to recognise and prepare for the reality of change will be out of the business soon.”

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