Education and Industrial Revolution 4.0: Prospects and Challenges to ASEAN Education in the Case of Philippine Education

Abstract

ASEAN Education is confronted with the emerging paradigms of twenty-first century education brought about by the rapid globalization process and the dawning of the new industrial revolution popularly dubbed as “IR 4.0” (Industrial Revolution 4.0). IR 4.0 demands a new framework of education – one that readies individuals with appropriate, competent, and highly innovative skills as man-machine collaboration intensifies. Hence, there is now a shift of focus from improving industrial machines to investing more in human capital. This is the pathway ASEAN education is traversing right now. ASEAN Education aims primarily at producing highly skilled service providers who are twenty-first century ready and who will work effectively and efficiently for industries in the IR 4.0. Nevertheless, education is more than being able to stabilize and improve one’s economic standing in life. There is a more noble purpose towards which one undertakes the tedious process of learning. That is: to be fully human and transform the world. Using Paolo Freire’s Critical Pedagogy, the modalities and paradigms of twenty-first century education were critiqued in order to align with this vision. Thus, with the ongoing innovative progress in ASEAN Education, serious considerations arise: “Will the alignment of man and machine to enable new possibilities cause further alienation for humanity?”; “When real classrooms are substituted by virtual classrooms, will healthy social interaction be maintained?”; “Are the trends of the twenty-first century education truly set towards the furtherance of human depth and breadth? Keywords: criticality, education, fourth industrial revolution, globalization