The Southeast Asian university
Media
Part of Panorama
- Title
- The Southeast Asian university
- Creator
- Silcock, T. H.
- Language
- English
- Source
- Panorama Volume XXI (No. 2) February 1969
- Year
- 1969
- Rights
-
- Fulltext
- Vol. XXI THE PHILIPPINE MAGAZINE OF GOOD READING Entered as second class mail matter at the Manila Post Office on Dec. 1, 1965 Dr. M. Carreon cor. A. de las Alas, Sta. Ana, Manila MANILA, PHILIPPINES No. 2 THE SOUTHEAST ASIAN UNIVERSITY A fundamental feature of university life in Southeast Asia is that it has been imported from abroad, with ready-made value systems sometimes already crystallized in institutions, techniques, and attitudes. But academic values outside Southeast Asia are neither uniform nor un changing, and the comparison of different colonial aca demic models is stimulating new thought in the region. The institutions in which these values are exemplified are no longer sacrosanct . . . The imitation of foreign curricula, reading lists, and examination questions makes for unnecessary cultural con flict. One set of cultural and political ideas is approved academically; a quite different set finds expression in newspapers and in public life. And because the public is made to think of the university as mainly a source of factual knowledge, students come to rely on memory and care little for principles and techniques. It would seem to be wiser for the universities to make it quite clear that it is an important part of university training to change attitudes and to produce real professional people — doctors who can really cure, lawyers who can uphold* the law, historians who can find out and interpret what happened. (Continued on page 4) the name of our country. Let us call ourselves “Pelipinos,” and our country “Pelipinas” if we cannot help it, but for God’s sake, let us be permitted to write the words correctly. Nobody ever chides the Spanish Ame rican for not pronouncing the letter “C” in the purely Castilian style, but in his written language “S” is never substituted for “C” where the correct Spanish spelling calls for it. “It is high time, there fore in my opinion, that the users, students and scholars of the other Filipino dialects organize themselves for the sanity to the all Filipino task purpose of returning some of formulating and develop ing our common Natipnal Language by demanding and insisting on a strict adher ence to the basic lines ori ginally conceived and speci fically promulgated by our Congress under the authority of our national fundamental law, the Philippine Consti tution, as recommended by President Manuel Luis Que zon. — Manila Times, Jan. 1969. THE SOUTHEAST ASIAN . . . (Continued from page 1) The claim should be made. It may make the gov ernments keener than ever to have universities staffed by their own nations, who share the national aspirations; it may mean wrestling with difficult constitutional issues; but the right of the university, however constituted, to control the training of attitudes is one that should be fought for and won. For the whole concept of professional codes, and of the training of professional responsibility, is still unfamiliar in many of these countries. Universities are seen as places where people can learn to pass examina tions and so gain the knowledge formerly monopolized by Europeans. They are seen too few as places where values are created and attitudes changed. — From the Southeast Asian University by T. H. Sitcock, Emeritus Professor of Economics, Malaya U. Panorama
- pages
- 1+