Education for a Globalizing Asia: Challenges and Opportunities ed. by Enrique Niño P. Leviste (review)

"A country can only move as fast as its slower members" (80). These words from a Japanese friend cited by Fr. Bienvenido Nebres, SJ, in his essay, "Education for a Globalizing Asia," resound as the Philippines confronts the disheartening results of the 2018 Programme in International Student Achievement (PISA), an international assessment initiative by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Since 2000, the PISA has been one of the global benchmarks for quality of education. The latest results reveal that the Philippines ranks lowest in literacy and second lowest in both science and mathematics, a painful reminder that unless Filipinos address the basic problems that plague the education system all efforts at internationalization are not only superficial but also futile. This lesson is the overarching theme of Education for a Globalizing Asia: Challenges and Opportunities, a compilation of papers from the Eighth International Conference on Asian Studies organized by the Ateneo Center for Asian Studies (ACAS) in 2016, which includes Nebres's eponymously titled piece.

Four years after the conference, the issues raised by the papers compiled in this volume remain relevant because they present both the challenges and prospects of internationalization as they are translated into the different aspects of academic life, from general practices to more specific initiatives, in the educational systems of selected Asian countries. The compilation begins with an introduction by the editor, Enrique Niño P. Leviste, director for research at the Institute of Philippine Culture of the Ateneo de Manila University. The six chapters that follow tease out bold conversations on underlying forces and motivations that seem to direct the course of internationalization trends and initiatives.

Theresa B. Alviar-Martin and Mark C. Baildon's chapter, "Issues- Centered Global Citizenship Education (GCE) in Asia," examines the different models of global citizenship education in three countries: Singapore, Bhutan, and Japan. They claim that top-down models, such as instrumental and morally grounded models, are underpinned by neoliberal and nation-centric ideals that deprive citizens of real engagements in critical global discourses. Singapore's instrumental model uses GCE as a tool to establish state-promoted national identity and unity, while the morally grounded or spiritual model, like Bhutan's GCE, promotes values and ideals that bridge political and religious worldviews of citizenship. Alviar-Martin and Baildon advocate a cosmopolitan model of global citizenship education rooted in an issue-based critical discourse, affording students a situated view of global issues that affect them as both citizens of their respective countries and members of the global community. It would be interesting to examine under the same lens the provisions for GCE in the Philippines under the institutionalized National Service Training Program (NSTP) and the newly instituted K–12 curriculum. This evaluation can be another area of exploration for researchers.

Lukas S. Ispandriano and Martin Loffelhol's and Danilo Arao's chapters examine the impetuses that propelled internationalization in Indonesia and the Philippines, respectively. Ispandriano and Loffelhol's "Internationalizing Higher Education in Indonesia" traces the historical development of such initiatives in Indonesia by focusing on a single university, Universitas Atma Jaya Yogyakarta (UAJY), and probing how national and local initiatives are operationalized in the context of one of the country's top-ranking universities. This chapter presents the strategic and deliberate efforts of UAJY in internationalization, which started with initiating and cultivating international linkages and then proceeded to implement mechanisms to monitor and strengthen such relationships.

While the intention of the previous essay seems to be the documentation of practices and listing of recommendations, Arao's voice, in contrast, is a strong and critical admonition of what he claims as the Philippine government's neoliberal orientation in its educational policies and reforms, which leads to the persistent and systemic issues that the country continues to face. His chapter, "Globalization, Deregulation and Quality of Education in the Philippines," is an expanded version of a previously published article in...