Crisis in learning

PARIS – Flying to this French capital on the non-stop Air France flight from Manila, I watched the Oscar Best Picture winner “Oppenheimer.”

Weeks earlier, I had watched on Netflix the docu movie “Einstein and the Bomb,” which filled in some gaps in “Oppenheimer.”

Both movies made physics accessible (well, somewhat) to non-scientific minds like me. But it was still mind-boggling for me to consider how people can come up with such theories, and then to apply them, with such devastating consequences.

I have visited the shrine in Hiroshima, dedicated to preserving the unspeakable horror of the first time that nuclear power was unleashed on the planet, plus the second time in Nagasaki.

The movie about Albert Einstein showed that he knew the potential of his theory of relativity in creating a terrible weapon of mass destruction, and he worried about it.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, on the other hand, was driven by fear that the Nazis, who were beginning their mass extermination of Jews, might develop the atomic bomb first – and use it.

Everything is easier in hindsight. But I’m writing about the movies because I am in awe of the power of science and technology, and the role of S&T in modern life, including national defense and modern warfare.

We’re seeing the future of armed conflict in the Middle East, with Israel leading the way in innovation. Drones keep getting more sophisticated – and lethal. The Israelis have used science to turn benign, ordinary items including electronic pagers and walkie-talkies into improvised explosive devices. In Iran, hackers disrupted ATM operations.

Drones are also being widely used in the current war between Russia and Ukraine – a conflict that is a cause for serious concern here in France and the other NATO allies. France, a nuclear power, has been supplying Ukraine with weapons.

The Israelis, when not busy fighting and developing defense and surveillance hardware and software, also use science in cutting-edge agriculture and food production, health care, telecommunications, transportation, you name it.

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Biology was one of my favorite subjects, but I don’t know how I survived high school physics. Even in my senior years, I could barely grasp the concept of E=mc2. There are Filipinos who can understand science enough to apply it in the many aspects of personal and national life, but they seem to be too few.

Surely scientific thinking is not in the genes. Surely it’s not a racial or national thing, although Jews like Einstein and Oppenheimer seem to have an unusually high number per capita of geniuses in scientific, artistic and other endeavors.

My mind is on science because understanding scientific concepts requires top-quality education. Shortly before flying out of Manila, I was dismayed by the report of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, warning that our country faces a “learning crisis.”

Alongside this story was the news that Taiwan began this week sea trials of its first domestically built submarine. We buy a lot of machinery and appliances made in Taiwan so it’s not surprising that the self-ruled island can produce its own submarine.

That should help the Taiwanese in their maritime patrols and self-defense amid persistent reports that the Chinese might retake by force what Beijing considers as a renegade province.

Even without being put on notice by Washington under Donald Trump that Taiwan must shoulder more of the burden for its own defense, Taipei was already heading in that direction, investing more in procurement of its defense needs as well as in developing its own military equipment, modest as it may be.

Obviously, this self-defense capability won’t be enough to stop Beijing if it decides to retake Taiwan by force. But some Taiwanese officials have told me that even if they are like David to China’s Goliath, at least they should give the Chinese a hard time in case an invasion pushes through. (Also, we know who won that match.)

Credible self-defense intrinsically involves the scientific and academic communities. Our lawmakers keep mouthing platitudes about protecting maritime sovereignty against China’s aggressive claims, and then slash billions from the budgets of education, defense and science.

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Like Taiwan and the other Asian achievers, China has also invested heavily in education, with emphasis on competence in science and mathematics, which it is applying in national defense and hybrid warfare, among other things, and in competing globally in many fields. It has sent its people to space, and given the world TikTok and Zoom. In the Philippines, there’s a long waiting list for China’s BYD hybrid electric vehicles.

Advances in S&T, unfortunately, are also being used by Beijing to grab nearly the entire South China Sea, bully us in the West Philippine Sea and, if some of our security officials are correct, conduct cyber warfare and interference in Philippine political affairs. China has the world’s third largest Navy submarine fleet, after the US and Russia. After buying and refurbishing an aircraft carrier from Ukraine, China has produced its own.

As in the Manhattan Project led by Oppenheimer, China’s national defense involves multiple agencies, with science playing a crucial role.

In our case, we’re just starting to develop our own patrol boats for the Navy and Coast Guard. We’re still heavily reliant on foreign friends led by Uncle Sam for our self-defense.

Never mind national security; we can’t even apply S&T in food security. Instead of employing modern agriculture, for example, to increase domestic rice production and thus bring down regular retail prices, the government has resorted to the quick fix of heavily subsidizing rice for the poor, if only to be able to crow that the campaign promise of P20-a-kilo rice has been fulfilled. It’s intellectual dishonesty, but the target demographic, many of whom suffer from the learning crisis, won’t know better.

If we want credible self-defense, food security, durable infrastructure, an informed vote that translates into better governance – everything to make our nation a better place – we need to address that learning crisis.