"WE HAVE TO RAISE, GLOBALIZE
OUR EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS" - ANGARA

Senator Edgardo J. Angara emphasized the need to elevate current educational standards to international levels during his address at the commencement exercises of the Global City Innovative College in Pasig City.

Angara, Chair of the Senate Committee on Education, Arts and Culture, underscored that doing so will help the country's graduates succeed in the global labor market.

"Any of our graduates--be they in medicine, nursing, culinary arts, business administration or engineering--will have to compete for employment with graduates from other countries," said Angara. "We no longer live in a time where we just compete with ourselves. Competition is now international."

He added that the country will also have to boost its capacity for science and technology (S&T) and innovation.

"Innovation, creativity--these are the battlecries of the times. We must get into the business of creating new products and services, of crafting new ways of doing things," continued Angara, who is also the Chair of the Senate Committee on Science and Technology. "Only through innovation will we survive and prosper for those who do not innovate, stagnate."

The veteran lawmaker then urged new graduates to capitalize on the benefits of technology, especially today's fast-paced, highly-interconnected ICT.

"The Internet, the web, makes world-class knowledge available to everybody. All these tech-driven conveniences we now experience frees up a lot of time and resources. To an extent, we are only limited by our imagination and creativity," stressed Angara.

To conclude, the former UP president then related that upon his visit to the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology, he learned that the onset of dementia and Alzheimer's disease can be held back if patients were made to walk a certain numbers step each day.

"That experience taught me this: to be innovative, to apply innovations into our lives, does not require too much money," said the former UP President. "We just have to be imaginative and practical at the same time."