Knowledge As A Tourist Attraction

MANILA: The first time I saw the UP post on Facebook, my comment was, "Why Tagaytay City? Why not UP Diliman? It's easier to go there."

Look at the image above; it says, "UP Knowledge Festival" that is now showing (18 April) at Taal Vista Hotel in Tagaytay City, 17-19 April 2016. "Utak at Puso para sa bayan" (Mind and Heart for the people.) Utak at Puso is also UP. (Image from the UP website: up.edu.ph).

“We want people to see that what UP has been doing inside the laboratories, in field researches and creative works are timely, relevant and beneficial to the community and the nation,” says UP Vice President for Academic Affairs Gisela P Concepcion. Now then, this is what the logo image should have shown or intimated: That these technologies are good for the community and the country. You don't tell me what I should know – rather, you show me that if I used this or that, it will be for the good of my village and motherland.

The image-logo of the UP Knowledge Festival (above) is actually a one-sided mind map of the "Festival" – unfortunately, I don't understand the symbols or icons; there is a word or two on the halo around each icon, but except for the middle image, they are all unreadable. And, unfortunately for the designer, the middle figure looks like a dark mask (horror) to me, not really a light bulb.

All in all? Boring. No marketing impact at all. It doesn't encourage me to go find out. Yes, UP Knowledge Festival: Where is the knowledge that we can feast on?

The three-day Festival will comprise a number of activities (ANN, 15 April 2016, facebook.com). One will be an exhibit of cutting-edge research and innovations developed within the six clusters of the Emerging Interdisciplinary Research Program:

Agri/Aquaculture, Food & Nutrition
Health & Wellness
Disaster Risk Management and Climate Change
Energy, Environment and Ecotourism
Technology, New Materials and Other Products
Progressive Pedagogy and Educational Technology

I don't care if your research and/or innovation is cutting-edge: What's in it for me? And no, my experience working with the Los Baños Science Community is that "interdisciplinary" is not conducive to creativity because everyone is a star and, easily, the program becomes a clash of egos.

Festival means an occasion for feasting or celebration, especially a day or time of religious significance; an often regularly recurring program of cultural performances, exhibitions, or competitions; revelry, conviviality (American Heritage Dictionary). What is there to celebrate about – can the people identify with it?

The Festival "will showcase the outputs of its top scientists and artists in the areas of food production, health, climate change, energy, technology, education and more." To "showcase" is to "display prominently." If UP knows how to showcase those packages of knowledge, it should have displayed them in its own website, up.edu.ph, or on Facebook. If I know my alma mater, the displays were handled by academicians who have no flair for marketing. I don't have to go to Tagaytay to guess what they have there (but if they held the Festival at UP Diliman, I would have visited.)

"Outputs of its top scientists and artists in the areas of food production, health, climate change, energy, technology, education and more" – what are these scientific works and creative outputs, the public would like to find out before they spend their money and time going to Tagaytay. "Outputs of its top scientists and artists" is bragging, not selling your merchandise to the target customer. Why should he bother about your top scientists and artists?

“UP must serve as an academic hub with special emphasis on multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary frameworks that can serve as a catalyst for development,” UP President Alfredo E Pascual says. Are you marketing outputs of UP scientists or the UP System itself? Let's not confuse the target customer; in the Festival, you are marketing the outputs of UP and not how it is managed.

"An educated populace with knowledge capital (also called suprastructure) can bring about innovative approaches that will address the problems of society. This in turn can spur sustainable and inclusive economic growth on a par with our dynamic ASEAN neighbors." No sir, you are not selling innovation to address the problems of society – that's too much to ask those who will attend the Festival! You expect the latest UP knowledge on food production, health, climate change, energy, technology and education to bring about economic growth? I admire your bravado, but you're getting ahead of yourself!

I'm a writer who taught himself, but UP taught me how to teach with my Education major; I passed the very first Teacher's Exam in 1964, 80.6%, and that felt Good: no review, no leakage. I never left my interest in education, and so for instance when Harvard professor Howard Gardner came up with his theory of Multiple Intelligences, I examined it and found it advanced and creative. So, when you say, "Progressive Pedagogy," what do you mean? I'm interested. A photograph or an image attempting to show this kind of pedagogy would have been fruitful. And when you say, "Progressive Educational Technology," what do you mean? If you mean for instance standardized tests just like those coming from Harvard, I'm not going to buy. If you mean teaching by software, that depends – are they truly progressive or simply the old approach using a new medium?

With the Festival, UP is now talking about "Communicating Data & Science," and "Building Knowledge Cities" – and yet the whole UP System is behind the times when it comes to writing scientific papers and publishing them in journals within the System. Thus, it takes 1 year, even 2 years, for a 10-page manuscript to get published. Why can't any college or institute in UP publish its own journal every other month following world standards as embodied by the ISI requirements for accreditation? And why can't the journals keep up with the pace of the generation of knowledge via research studies that are either ongoing or have been terminated successfully? For instance, the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic & Natural Resources Research and Development (PCAARRD) was born in 1972; some 46 years later, there must be a thousand research reports now awaiting for people to extract the knowledge from them. While PCAARRD is not UP, a great many of the studies done especially in agriculture were done by UP professors. Publication of technical journals is for increasing scientific literacy, which is one of the objectives of the Festival.

I am not talking through my hat. Personally, I made the Los Baños-based private Philippine Journal of Crop Science world-class (ISI) in 3 years even if when I started as Editor in Chief it was 3 years behind in its issues and I was already 63 years old at the time – that means I worked double time and double duty, with hardware and software, because I was also the layout artist. UP has to learn efficiency even given old staff and new technology. Age is no excuse for mediocrity.

No Sir, knowledge cannot be turned into a tourist attraction – until it talks the language of the people, preferably popular English, until it is seen to meet an immediate need. Also, it must be original; and UP-to-date.