Nam V.

1104

Education
The common educational problems in ASEAN are that the
committee is composed of many underdeveloped countries such as
Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos whose literacy rate is variously low
and education system that has not been standardized. When in fact,
all the country members should meet the same educational
standard nevertheless, there will be subsequent drawbacks in
terms of economics, politics, and visions when becoming unified.
The cause of this widely concerned issue is because some
countries in ASEAN Thailand for instance have been attempting
to improve their education standards based on their own ineffective
curriculum instead of building a new efficient one as educationally
developed country such as Singapore, Norway, and Canada. In my
opinion, this problem will reveal several subsequences when ASEAN
nations become unified in 2015. To illustrate, Singaporeans who
have been educated well will be able to get a highly paid career in
Philippines, and of course, Pilipino companies will hire Singaporean
workers who are more talented than Pilipino workers to work for the
company.
Viable solutions for this are: (1) extend the date of unifying
ASEAN and standardize the education system for all ASEAN
countries to meet the minimum requirement, (2) establish the
exchange program for ASEAN students to learn each ones culture
and educational programs once all the countries are unified, (3)
create a free education program through out the ASEAN countries in
order to open up opportunity for those who lack of assessment to
qualified education such as students in Myanmar and Cambodia,
and (4) establish an organization led by Singapore that gathers all
teachers in ASEAN countries who have a willful mind to develop
their educational standards they will discuss common problems in
each country and potential solutions to move ASEAN forwards
together.
These solutions, however, can be challenged in reality due to a
number of reasons. For (1), a developed country such as Singapore,
considered one of ASEAN powerful nations, will disagree to postpone
the assemble date of ASEAN because it is in need of resource and
does not need to further develop their education. For (2) and (3)
people from each country in Asia has been cultivated from different
cultures and each of them has a unique identity that can be the
factor opposing them from learning other members cultures and
traditions. Moreover, this needs a lot of money in order to process
the plan efficiently, despite the ASEAN does not have a large
amount of budget. Last but not least, (4) is the most feasible
solution since the solution does not need a lot of money in process,
and there are lots of modern people who profoundly want to
improve their nations education systems and achieve better
standards of ASEAN committee.