ASEAN Socio-Culture Community toward Building Human Resources in Case of Education in Lao’s People Democratic Republic

ASEAN Socio-Culture Community toward Building Human Resources in Case of Education in Lao’s People Democratic Republic


Lia Karina

Abstract
“..….An all new education system is needed, a system which centering all ways in means to develop intellectual strength and produce thinkable framework to face skepticism burden….” (Karl Mannheim)


INTRODUCTION

In world marked by high technology, mass production as organizing human labor perhaps represent one of the most potential appliances to act mechanically.[1] Nowadays the quality of each human labor has to be measured by their capability in doing certain jobs which is required by the company their in, mostly these capabilities are thought in their education background, so it is easier to work in a major which fits the educational background. Education is an important aspect in every human life; it measures the development of human progress in building the future by using their intelligent. Education surrounds every age which human lives in, it can come through small and simple things or big and complicated problems. Human knows education since they can read and write although usually we learn things since we’re born. Education plays an important role for human resource development and provides knowledge, good moral behaviour and good culture for the people. Every country in the world is aware that education is most important in building human resources that can develop their country, the higher the quality of the human resource, the bigger expectations that could approach for the country’s development. It is often that to measure one country’s credibility is from their quality of education, that’s why every developed countries have high qualities in their human resources while developing countries are still slow in maintaining their education, most developing countries are formed after colonization from most developed countries such as the European and British which results countries that nowadays are known as India, Africa, Timor Leste including the Southeast Asian Countries which are gathered in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
ASEAN is an organization includes 10 countries which are known as developing countries, such as; Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Philippines, Brunei Darussalam, Singapore, Myanmar, Thailand and Lao People’s Democratic Republic. Formed in August 8th 1967 based on the Bangkok Declaration, ASEAN is known as an organization that seeks back to the traditional way of solving problems together which is consensus, having the same historical background made all of the ASEAN members have the same feeling of brotherhood between them. Despite the difference of culture and geographic site, all ASEAN members have an understanding of all the condition that each country have, we can see from how they help each other in economic and social problems. The five countries that joined after the five former are known as poorer countries, exclude Brunei Darussalam they are Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia and Lao, all programs which are established since ASEAN was formed consist of plans to develop each and every country to become a developed country which will make the ASEAN members equal to compete with the western countries. For example, when Indonesia suggested to built regional security based on the terror in September 11th 2001, all members agreed to make an agreement which is based on economic (ASEAN Economic Community), social culture (ASEAN Social Culture Community) and security (ASEAN Security Community) to reach the goal to perform ASEAN community. The agreement suggested that all the programs have to be accomplished by the year 2020; this was determined by considering the economic gap between the member countries.
In building the ASCC agreement, one of the important aspects is developing equal education among youth in ASEAN. The main focus of ASEAN cooperation in education continues to be on promoting ASEAN awareness among ASEAN’s young students – through the curricular of primary and secondary schools in the region, and through student exchange programs at the secondary level. The ASEAN Committee on Education (ASCOE) has agreed to develop a five-year plan of action and work program to guide education cooperation activities. Malaysia hosted the first ASEAN Student Exchange Program at Secondary Level in 2000, and Singapore hosted the second programme in June/July 2001. Thailand has offered to host the third exchange program.
In many ways the South East countries which are gathered in ASEAN have tried to develop their countries not only through economy but also by building human resource through education. Before ASEAN was formed, the Southeast Asian Minister of Education Organization (SEAMEO)[2] was first formed by the ministers of education from Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Republic of (South) Viet Nam, the Chairperson of UNESCO National Commission of the Philippines, and the Special Adviser to the President of the United States of America as a result in a meeting in Bangkok. The signing of the SEAMEO Charter was done later by the Ministers of Education of Indonesia (Soemantri Hardjoprakoso), Laos (Leuam Insissienmay), Malaysia (Mohamed Khir Johari), the Philippines (Carlos P. Romulo), Singapore (Ong Pang Boon) and Thailand (Pin Malakul) on 7 February 1968, and later by Vietnam (Nguyen Van Tho), 28 June 1968. The SEAMEO Charter was signed during the Third SEAMEO Council Conference in Singapore. Prepared by a group of international lawyers, the Charter was submitted for clearance by the Member Countries before the signing. In 1973 at the Eighth SEAMEO Council Conference in Phnom Penh, the Charter was amended to include the terms and conditions of Associated Membership. It was revised again to cover Affiliate Membership at the Eighteenth SEAMEO Council Conference in Penang in 1983.[3] Unfortunately, SEAMEO is not well known to all the citizens in each Member Countries of ASEAN, the benefit of SEAMEO haven’t touched the whole level of society, it would be wise to spread the SEAMEO vision and mission to all level of society, so that small countries such as Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia and Lao can get a hand in building their human resources.
Toffler, in Future Shock (1970) and other writings, adequately documents the responses people generate to prospects of the future, nothing that the future as an unknown is extremely difficult for people to contemplate. The problem is not alone an educational one. As a nation we have a variety crisis – the energy crises, the monetary crises, the silent majority crises, the moral crises, the rise-of-crime crises, the pollution crises, and the population crises – all the results of lack of planning.[4] To achieve the goal towards ASEAN Community especially the ASEAN Social Culture Community, it must be a priority to encourage ASEAN members to increase their level of education by all means. As Cole said “Education is everywhere social. Because education is always a human process, one good way to understand it better is to study its social side.”[5] In this case I will look on the side of one of the poor country in ASEAN, which is Lao.

Education in Lao People’s Democratic Republic

Education in ASEAN is very much different remembering that each country in ASEAN has different methods in building their human resources based on their historical background. The early Buddhist monasteries were some of the oldest institution. Older yet was the Hindu ‘padepokan’ which was not only a meeting place for the village but also a centre of learning where religious instruction was given. Later, with the coming of Islam, boys in Muslim countries like Indonesia and Malaysia often acquired simple literacy in the ‘pesantren’ or the ‘surau’ or the Quran classes under a Haji, while in the other countries the temple priest became the main instructor in the village. Early European presence in the region brought little change as trade was the chief reason for their coming to the East. However, alongside the merchants came the Christian missionary who, in varying degrees, showed enthusiasm for the education of the native. After the colonization, each Member Country have differences in building their human resources through education, some examples are; Indonesia is the only country in the region where education at the first level is not free. In theory there is no charge but schools are permitted to and do, in fact collect fees. In Malaysia there is relatively small drop-out problem compared with either the Philippines or Thailand where less than half the first year intakes reaches the end of the sixth year.[6]
In ASEAN countries, the number of jobless continues to rise, wages continue to fall, governments have found themselves with less money to protect the environment and look after the health of the citizens. They are less able to invest in developing the skills of our people which makes them in danger of losing a whole generation of skilled workers who are so essential for the development of their economies and societies.[7]
The lack of employment which occurs in ASEAN is automatically connected with the lack of education in citizen’s poor area. Here I’ll explore the education in Laos which is officially known as Lao People's Democratic Republic, Laos is a former French colony that became an independent nation on July 19, 1949. The government of Laos-one of the few remaining official communist states-has been decentralizing control and encouraging private enterprise since 1986. Laos has made significant improvements in its economic growth, averaging 7 percent over the last decade. Due to its heavy dependence on trade with Thailand, Laos fell victim to the financial crisis in the East Asia region in 1997.
The Lao People's Democratic Republic or Laos is located in the centre of Indochina. It has an eastern border of 1,957 km with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, a northern border of 416 with the People's Republic of China, a north-western border of 230 km with the Union of Myanmar, a western border of about 1,840 km with the Kingdom of Thailand and a southern border of about 492 km with the Kingdom of Cambodia. The country provides a potentially strategic land link for closer sub-regional cooperation in the Greater Mekong area. Laos has a total population of 5.2 million (1999), with an average annual growth rate of 2.4 percent. People share a rich ethnic diversity, comprising such groups as Hmong, Khmu, Yao, A'kha, Ikoh, Lu etc. Most of them have kept their own customs, dialects and traditional dress. In total 47 different groups are accounted for in Laos.
Over 2.1 million people in Lao PDR, almost on-half of the total population, live in poverty. About 1.9 million of the poor are in the rural areas where poverty incidence of 53 percent is more than double that in urban areas, estimated at 24 percent. Among the three regions of the country, the South exhibits the highest poverty incidence at 60 percent. In the rural South, 66 percent of the population, or two out of three people live in poverty.
There are no national unemployment numbers for Laos, but a 1994 survey of five urban centres (Vientiane, Luang Prabang, Savannakhet, Pakse and Thakek) concluded that 5.6 percent of the labour force, the population who are usually economically active, was unemployed. Lack of skilled workers has led to an increase in private sector salaries, particularly for managers, technicians and professionals.[8]
Of the many ethnic groups in Laos, only the Lao Loum had a tradition of formal education, reflecting the fact that the languages of the other groups had no written script. Until the midtwentieth century, education was primarily based in the Buddhist wat, where the monks taught novices and other boys to read both Lao and Pali scripts, basic arithmetic, and other religious and social subjects. Many villages had wat schools for novices and other village boys. Only ordained boys and men in urban monasteries had access to advanced study. The Pathet Lao began to offer Lao language instruction in the schools under its control in the late 1950s, and a Laotian curriculum began to be developed in the late 1960s in the RLG schools.[9]
Laos is one of the poorest countries in the ASEAN region. It is a landlocked country with limited infrastructure and a largely unskilled workforce. Social indicators in Laos, such as health levels and death rates, are among the lowest in the region and fall closer to the average for Sub-Saharan Africa. Laos is also at risk of occasional floods, droughts and blight, and the environment is facing even more immediate dangers from unexploded ordinance, deforestation, and soil erosion. A majority of the population does not have access to potable water.
After the proclamation of the Lao PDR, the Lao government has been emphasizing on educational system issue. Lao educational system comprises of pre school education, general education, technical and vocational education and higher education. Apart from these, there is non-formal and private education. As we aware, Laos PDR is a developing country. For all levels of education, it is facing many challenges and has also a limited budget. And, it isn’t easy to resolve the problems of illiteracy, particularly people in rural areas. Or even in the city, schools are not enough for the increasing number of students.
Schools in Laos were facing following problems:
- First, the lack of sufficient fund to supply all the equipment needs such as textbooks, laboratory apparatus, computers, library…etc.
- Second, they don’t have enough qualified teachers.
- Third, there is a shortage of classrooms and schools.
In addition there is an inadequate curriculum in terms of innovating the education with new information technology such as the use of computer and the internet in the school. Those terms which are mentioned above are necessary for education. So, in the process of human resource development Lao need a new culture of teaching and learning which is introduced as an integral part of the transformation process. In order to cope with the challenge in the new century, teachers themselves need additional training and should have new education of methods and approaches to delivery of education and students should be developed the sense of creativity, community, solidarity and international understanding. Student’s lessons should be practically connected to real life situation.[10]
The government of Laos has identified education as their top priority. The illiteracy rate is 50 percent, and for the 70 percent of Laos's citizens who enrols in primary school, the dropout rate averages close to 60 percent. Most teachers have less than five years of education. Exacerbating the problem is the remoteness and inaccessibility of many areas in Laos, which makes it difficult to attract and retain trained teachers. In addition, most teachers are untrained in ethnic minority sensitivities or bilingual education, which is essential for working with the country's 48 separate groups. The lowest priority for education is given to girls as families keep them at home to help in raising younger children and doing fieldwork.[11]
Education is improving in Lao PDR, but still faces many limitations. Nearly 60 percent of teachers in primary and secondary schools are under-qualified. Very low public expenditure is a major constraint to ensuring balanced growth in the education system, especially primary education for the poor.[12]
Through the Women's Literacy and Basic Skills Project, many of Laos' ethnic minority women have been given access to some form of education and a chance to improve their lives and to help in the development of their communities. A total of 3,240 women participated in the program's various projects. It is further estimated that an additional 16,000 people will benefit indirectly from the women's participation. These beneficiaries include children and other family members, as well as villages.[13]
To resolve the problems mentioned above, Lao Government has given a great effort to improve educational system by many ways such as revising the curricular and training of teachers through scholarships provided by other countries or international organizations. Teachers got also a scholarship to participate in a training course abroad. Several education and awareness programs are currently in operation. These include conservation education and public awareness raising, primary and university curriculum enrichment, and a mobile conservation education unit.

Conclusion

The education in facing the globalisation must be developed in each Member Countries in ASEAN, while most of the countries in ASEAN are developing countries, the encouragement for maintaining human resources have to come from each country as a concern of their national integrity, as Mahdi Elmandjra[14] said, “….the key part of the learning process and of national educational policies is self-reliance. You cannot build up self-reliance through dependency….”
The problems which the government of Lao will face is the difficulties to reach the rural areas that is so far from the cities, also the tradition of women minorities in education should be erased by looking forward to build a better country. Besides all that the main point in developing human resource is to make South East Asian countries catch up with the western in order to continue the globalization of technology especially ASEAN members. The agreement in building ASCC have to taken seriously, not only in planning but also taking real actions to every social problems such as education as an important aspect.
What most countries lack are the political will and the courage to do so- in spite of or because of the great socio-political transformation which education brings about. Because of an acceleration of history, learning has become, more than ever before, a long-term process. Any reform of learning systems ought to be worked out in terms of generations, to be able to achieve a thorough change from pre-school education to postgraduate studies, including the training of teachers and the production of new teaching materials. A period of fifteen to twenty years is the minimum time required to transform an education system.[15]
We can see that it does take a long time to improve the human skill in building the human resource through education, especially forming a new system of education that is so much different from the traditional culture that each country has. Even though the system is ready, sometimes the society is not prepared to accept the new influence which entered their pattern of thinking; this might take a lot of time before they can adapt the system and automatically applied this system to their every day life. ASEAN should be patient in continuing development of the human resources with the new system that they can provide by applying the ASCC.
And with SEAMEO as an external organization of ASEAN it can encourage each Member Countries to develop their national education, despite their differences in putting the government budget for national education; each country should put education as a high priority in building human resources as a must for the global world.


BIBLIOGRAPHIES:

Books;
- Brembeck, Cole S., 1967, Social Foundations of Education, Jhon Wiley and Sons: USA.
- Deliar Noer, 1988, Culture, Philosophy and The Future, PT Dian Rakyat.
- Freire, Paulo, 2001, pendidikan yang membebaskan, MELIBAS.
- F.H.K Wong, 1976, Teachers education in ASEAN, Heinemann Educational Books LTD.
- Meeth, L. Richard, 1974, Quality Education for Less Money, Jossey-Bass Publishers: London.
- Rodolfo C. Severino, JR, 1999, ASEAN Rises to the Challenge, the ASEAN Secretariat.

Websites;
- www.asean.org access on April 2005
- www.seameo.org access on April 2005
- http://www.catholicrelief.org/our_work/where_we_work/overseas/Asia/laos/index.cfm access on 19th June 2005
- http://www.literacy.org/explorer/laos_out.html access on 19 June 2005
- http://www.adb.org/Documents/News/2001/nr2001117.asp access on 9 December 2005




[1] Freire, Paulo, 2001, pendidikan yang membebaskan, page 44.
[2] The Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) was established on 30 November 1965 as a chartered international organization whose purpose is to promote cooperation in education, science and culture in the Southeast Asian region. Despite that, to enhance regional understanding and cooperation and unity of purpose among Member Countries and achieve a better quality of life through establishment of networks and partnerships, provision of an intellectual forum for policy makers and experts, and the promotion of sustainable human resource development are vision and mission of SEAMEO.
[3] SEAMEO official website : www.seameo.org
[4] L. Richard Meeth, 1974, Quality Education for Less Money, page 3.
[5] Cole S. Brembeck, 1967, Social Foundations of Education, page 4.
[6] F.H.K Wong, 1976, Teachers education in ASEAN, pages 6-7.
[7] Rodolfo C. Severino, JR, 1999, ASEAN Rises to the Challenge, pages 173-174.
[8] www.asean10thsummitinLaoPDR.gov
[9] http://www.mapzones.com/world/asia/laos/educationindex.php

[10] Mr Khamkheg Saysena and Miss Sipaphaphone Chounramany in Education for the Future in the Lao PDR (country report), 2000
[11] http://www.catholicrelief.org/our_work/where_we_work/overseas/Asia/laos/index.cfm
[12] http://www.adb.org/Documents/News/2001/nr2001117.asp
[13] http://www.literacy.org/explorer/laos_out.html
[14] Mahdi Elmandjra is professor at University Mohamed V, Rabat, Morocco.
[15] Deliar Noer, Culture, Philosophy and The Future, 1988, PT Dian Rakyat, page 143