Education is – or should be – all about creating opportunities.  At its best, education is a process of stimulating and opening young minds to new possibilities and potential, nurturing creativity and fulfilling aspirations based on high ideals.

In brief, education is a process of enlightenment that has the potential to renew our world.

With these thoughts in mind, it was a privilege to be involved this week in two independent processes to establish new United World College National Committees.  As background information, students are recruited for United World Colleges through a network of voluntary National Committees and Selection Contacts, of which there are presently about 130 around the world.  National Committees are responsible for four basic functions: (a) publicising and promoting United World Colleges in their home country, (b) recruiting students for the 13 United World Colleges, (c) fundraising, and (d) maintaining contact with alumni.  Some National Committees also conduct programs of limited duration called Short Courses.

Two significant countries that lack UWC National Committees are China and Myanmar (formerly Burma).  In the case of China, students are presently recruited individually by each College through a myriad of processes and selection contacts such as NGOs, government agencies, recruiting companies, and direct interviews by College personnel.  In the case of Myanmar, the absence of a National Committee has effectively barred the way for young people from that country to have any opportunity to enter a United World College.

On Wednesday I travelled to an unusually unpolluted Beijing (see photo, left) to participate in the inaugural meeting to establish a UWC National Committee in Mainland China.  As shown in the photo at the top of this blog, I was joined in the meeting at the Gehua New Century Hotel by Ms Tian Bersey (Head of National Committee Development at the UWC International Office, London), Mr Mark Wang (CEO of Agrinos and graduate of Red Cross Nordic UWC, Norway), and Ms Xiaohang Sumner (Director of Extra-Academic Programs and Teacher of Economics at Red Cross Nordic UWC, Norway, and also a graduate of UWC-USA).  Later we were joined by Ms Sarah Gross, a graduate of Pearson UWC in Canada who currently works at the Canadian Embassy in Beijing.

The meeting was very productive and highly successful, and we emerged with a firm action plan to have the UWC National Committee in China established as a functioning legal entity by 1st January 2011.  We hope to meet again in June this year to discuss details of the process of student recruitment, including the timeline and the selection criteria.  It is expected that the multitude of individual recruitment processes currently undertaken by the various United World Colleges in Mainland China will be subsumed by this new National Committee from 2011 onwards.

My involvement to help establish a UWC National Committee in Myanmar arose from the excellent and farsighted work of some of our students and teachers during Project Week in March this year.  One of the Project Teams from the College was assisting an NGO to build children’s playgrounds in Thailand near the border with Myanmar.  When our students (Maddie and Carlos) and teachers (Selwyn and Michèle) discovered that the NGO (the Thabyay Education Network) also operates an extremely effective program to select students from Myanmar to attend universities around the world on scholarship, they took the initiative to explore the possibility of the same NGO undertaking selections for Li Po Chun United World College, and perhaps other UWCs.

Officials from Thabyay responded very favourably to this suggestion, and the more the idea was explored, the more it became evident that the aims of the NGO and UWCs were largely synonymous.  To follow up this initial link made by the students and teachers, I then pursued the options and possibilities with the relevant personnel from the UWC International Office at the Latin American Regional Meeting of UWC National Committees last month.  I received a very positive and encouraging response, to say the least, and they immediately offered their assistance by preparing a draft Memorandum of Understanding.

I see the initiatives to establish UWC National Committees in Myanmar and China as being especially significant, not just for the two countries concerned, but regionally and globally.  After all, China and Myanmar are seen by outsiders as two countries that blur the important distinction between education and indoctrination.  What do I mean by this?  Setting aside the obvious point that ‘education’ has a positive connotation where as ‘indoctrination’ is a negatively loaded word, I believe:

1. •Education broadens the mind whereas indoctrination narrows the mind;
   

2. •Education is a dialogue, whereas indoctrination is a monologue;
   

3. •Education transcends indoctrination; and
   

4. •Education lights fires whereas indoctrination fills buckets.
   

In that context, I believe that providing more visionary and empowering educational opportunities for the next generation of decision-makers in China and Myanmar will be of colossal significance.

After all, providing excellent education (with all that this term implies) is vitally important for young people in all countries, even in places where it may be taken for granted.

The renewal of our world demands nothing less.