OUR grandparents can still remember the 1960s when the Philippine educational system was at its peak. Teachers and students from Southeast Asia would visit the country, to attend seminars and workshops, or to take their graduate degrees. The University of the Philippines in Los Baños and the International Rice Research Institute trained Southeast Asian farmers on how to obtain a higher yield per hectare from the rice that they planted. And even the public schools produced students who later excelled in their respective fields of endeavor.