Announcement

This to let you know that, even as you are looking at this blog, I am in the process of putting together a comprehensive personal website. This blog is useful for posting interesting tidbits, but the website will be much more substantial, including full texts of my major speeches and articles, and many more photos and videos. I will let you know the website address as soon as I put it up. Watch out for it.

My Currrent Hobby

People ask why I enjoy hobbies like this. For most of my professional life, my work has been meaningful, but largely academic and abstract. In my efforts at teaching sudents, helping formulate policy, and providing visionary leadership, I often do not know how much of a difference I have really made. But after a few hours of intense work on a hitorical monument or a model ship at the end of a workday, I see the visible and specific progress I have made each time. The concrete sense of accomplishment balances my other work.

For Educators

And now for something a little more serious...

Two substantive books have books have recently come out, both of which I was heavily involved in, which I recommend for educators who want to get a better grip on implications for the future of education in this fast changing world.

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The first book is a major publication of the Asian Development Bank, whose team of consultant writers/experts I had the honor of coordinating for this book. ADB recognizes that "a growing body of evidence points to serious education and human resource-related problems that require urgent attention if the region is to sustain its progres... the lack of adequtate educated and trained workers has been a major bottleneck in growth and economic expansion." The study therefore frames a response to this situation. As the foreword states:

The study reaffirms that the goal of inclusive growth depends on continuous development of an adequate human resource base, and provides a stratgegic framework for ADB's work in the education sector in support of that development... and provides a framework for identifying the priorities and strategic areas of interveniton for different types of countries at different levels of development.

You can look this up in the ADB publications website, and even downoad the entire text if you want to.

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The second book is the product of a joint collaboratoin between the University of Hong Kong and the East-West Center in Honolulu. It is more visionary and less technical in tone than the first. Historically, education systems around the world evolved and were developed for societies that have since radically transformed, and yet no parallel tarnsfoermatin has taken place in the the educaton systems they spawned, unlike other sectors. As I wrote in the foreword of this book:

This book responds to the growing unease of educators and non-educators aliken about the inadequacy of most current education systems and programs to sufficiently meet the demands of fast-chnging societies. There is no doubt: education must change... There is no lack of effort, or literature, on how to improve systems or sub-sectors within them. But this book departs from that approach, and provides insights, not into how to improve existing systems, but into how to change them altogether... It provides a useful road map for the navigators of change, within which they can plot out their speicfic itineraries towards their goal. It illuminates the basic goal of education--the total and balanced development of individuals and, through them, societeis--and depicts the main featrures, the imperatives, the demands and the pitfalls of an ever more interdependent, globalzed world in which these goals must be pursued.

On a personal note, I am grateful to the editors for the dedication on the first page:

"As editors of this volume,

we would like to dedicate the book to

Victor Ordonez,

an educational leader of

global stature and rare passion,

to whom we owe special thanks for inspiring

-- as well as contributing to --

this project."

Travel sketches

Here are some sketches I did during my various travels.

Choosing a book to read?

Have you read my historical novel yet? It is available at Power Books and National Bookstore. Check it out.

Excerpts from author’s remarks

Book Launching, “With Hearts Aflame,” by Victor Ordonez

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(click to enlarge)

…Every work of fiction is in a profound sense autobiographical, for even imagined events and characters in it carry within them the signature traits, values, and passions of the author. In the book we launch today, you may well see then traces of me, and even of your influences on me. Just as the novel was shaped by me, so also I was shaped by you in the many and different ways you have touched my life. So as you join me in my joy and pride at the birth of first novel, know that indirectly, you had a part in its production.

… I always had a fascination with history, but the idea for the story came to me during my LA days as a filmmaker in the 80s. The Cory government and eventually UNESCO took me away from that world before I could develop the idea further, but the story in me never died. It was when I was on extended leave from work three years ago, that I finally found the time and focus to develop the story and put it on paper. To my dismay, I found that my initial attempts were far from satisfactory.

I showed my drafts to my respected writer friends, and they gently reminded me that fiction and novels are a different language from reports and speeches; different skills were needed. I humbly had to learn a second language, and a new craft. I had to write with the heart and not just with the head.

Since the story was imbedded in a historical reality, I had the intellectual chore of research, but since it was a love story, I had an emotional task facing me as well. So the book I gave birth to had to be, in a true sense, the product of a marriage, of history and of romance, of fact and of fiction, of the mind and of the heart, of content and of form.

... For helping me with the historical aspects, I am grateful to friends and scholars who lent me or pointed to useful materials, to the helpful people of the National Historical Archives here and the public library in New York.

And for helping me, not with the intellectual part, but with the harder part of capturing emotions, atmosphere, rhythm, relationships and a deeper sense of reality and truth, I must thank my special friends—the writers and those in the performing arts of stage, screen, and concert halls. Their experience with the human emotions and realities that they portray constantly in their work served as my compasses in navigating the truth and the emotion of this novel. To them I owe a huge debt of gratitude. They are the true godparents of this baby of mine. The talents, insights and passions they shared with me, their hearts aflame, are the lights that guided my way.

… I have often been asked why and for whom I wrote the novel. Upon reflection, I realize that it must have come from an awareness that, especially in turbulent times like these, nothing is more important than a true sense of identity, a firm grounding in one’s cultural and historical roots. And that seems dreadfully missing in today’s Filipino, but especially among the youth and among Filipinos abroad, many of whom are really thirsting to know more about who they are and where they came from. In a sense, therefore, this book is written and intended less for the cognoscenti and literati of Philippine society, than for those who do not read much or who do not know Philippine history. For them I am hoping the book is first of all an entertaining and compelling love story that they will follow avidly, but one that will subliminally and painlessly develop in them a better understanding of the struggles, heroism and splendor of their country’s most glorious period.

... I invite you then to enter the world of Tom Wilcox and Coring del Pilar. When I entered their world, when I wrote this book, two marvelous things happened to me: I remembered what it was like to fall in love, and I remembered what it was like to be proud to be Filipino. I hope when you read this book, the same two things will happen to you and set your hearts aflame in turn. In these troubled times, there is nothing we more desperately need--love, not war; hope and pride in our country, not despair and shame.

working in film

These are a collection of photos, both on and off the set, from my movie and stage play days.