When the Education Cares TOO MUCH About Grades, Schools Produce Idiots Instead of Intellectuals

During the pandemic, I was left in limbo thinking about my poor performance under K+10. It was something to think about that a classmate of mine who was both a summa cum laude and an honor student, ended up posting on his wall, "Students cheat because the education system cares more about grades instead of learning." The class salutatorian of our batch even commented about the good old days. I always had that feeling of insecurity and envy towards people better than me. But as Warren Edward Buffet would say, "Don't hate successful people. Learn from them instead." One of them is currently a teacher and the other is in Canada. I thought about my insecurities especially when I used to believe I was descended from a fine scholar and my family was a family of scholars. 

I remembered the time I was taking MBA and got conned. I was asked, "Is that what MBA taught you?" I got touchy and ended up admitting, eventually, that I was only taking MBA for the prestige. Yet, it's possible to even get a prestigious education background and still be a real-life idiot. Many times, we're prone to believing that our grades will always determine our future. The problem is when the grading system is based on memorization over learning. I could go ahead and take a Ph. D. in business administration and still be an idiot. I was even told, "Don't get too touchy when I'm asking that. Look, that proves that the Philippine education system really sucks!" 

This reminds me of the toxic mindset we had towards menial workers (read here). There are parents who say, "If  you don't study hard, you will end up like him." They can be pointing at the carpenter, the janitor, etc. Yet, what they don't realize is that some people do menial jobs to pay for their tuition. Did you know Lucio Tan Sr. used to be a janitor? Do you think civil engineers will be able to build their buildings without menial labor? For all we know, while the father is pointing to his son about the possible bad future without an education--the person dressed dirtily on top of the building is the engineer himself. Civil engineers can get pretty dirty especially when they have to climb and supervise those structures. 

The end result is that people are forced to study without understanding. As long as you get a good grade that's all that matters, right? I even believe now that one of the biggest causes of cheating is not just poor time management or a desire for easy success. If the grade is all that matters over learning then cheating should be allowed. I still believe good grades can be a reflection of diligence. However, when one goes solely for grades then cheating should be allowed. If grades are all that matter then why isn't cheating allowed? The way grading is done is almost solely based on rote memorization with very little understanding. Getting a high grade based on understanding will mean more than getting a high grade only for merely memorizing without understanding. 

I just thought about how people can't wait to get a degree, especially during university days. In my case, I hated high school days so much that I couldn't wait for it to end after those dreaded four years. Ironically, I ended up having fond memories with teachers who scolded me a lot for my attention-seeking misbehavior. I even talk to them whenever I see them. It's almost like graduation is freedom day, right? I remember feeling insecure because I almost didn't graduate high school. I even bought the lie that commerce courses are a waste of money. Yet, without commerce courses, who will serve as marketing experts? Without marketing experts, can an engineering firm even get promoted? Without financial experts, can an engineering firm even make profits? Not everyone can graduate from prestigious courses either. I go to a computer shop and realize that they still need accountants and marketing personnel. Somehow, it could be right to say "It's just a degree." for many reasons. While you may need to go to college to practice a licensed profession--I'm having my doubts about whether or not every person even needs a college degree to succeed. With the K+12 program, some people may already even work after they're done with high school.

What may stress me out is that I spent three years in business administration (two years were spent in an associate degree in computer science) and three more years in the master's degree. Yet, I ended up making a lot of bad decisions. I didn't even learn how to invest in stocks. I didn't even know how Cash Go program or installment program works. I even got mad and said, "Well, sorry but the school never offered a subject on credit card management!" I even said, "If you say college is useless then don't go to a doctor, don't go to a lawyer, don't go to a pharmacist, don't go to an engineer, because they all went to college." Yet, under K+12, a college degree may not be for everyone unless they want to practice those courses. Right now, I even feel maybe I could've started a business at only 18-20 years old without entering college and be home-taught instead. Some of the most successful businessmen had a high school diploma but never went to college. Then again, I tend to use the fact that the late John Gokongwei as a commerce graduate, Tan Sr. graduated from chemical engineering, and Tony Tancaktiong graduated from chemical engineering.

Even worse, the education system tends to make people blind to their past successes. I think that's a problem with boomer parents who brag about their good old days. They can brag about how they were honor students with their old rotten textbooks. I remembered the class salutatorian who reprimanded me said, "Did this updated curriculum exist during their time? Why not ask your elders that?" He was always trying to help me out but I always barked at him, falsely accusing him that he was an arrogant person on his face. The truth was that he just wanted to help me when he reprimanded me as a friend. Fortunately, the class salutatorian never let his success blind him. Can they brag about how they can type 1,000 WPS (I'm just exaggerating here) with a typewriter when a PC is a lot more helpful in reducing waste? For Chinese schools, can they brag about how good they were with Zhuyin Fuhao when it's now hardly used in favor of Hanyu Pinyin? I guess some people who keep going against Pinyin are against it because it rendered their intensive knowledge of Zhuyin Fuhao useless? Just imagine how they knew their Zhuyin but my goodness, they are reading the Pinyin all wrong. I even asked them if they could register Chinese-sounding businesses with Zhuyin. They got defensive and started calling names instead.

The big issue is that some people who did well academically, become blinded. Fortunately, not all do as in the case of the two people I just mentioned earlier. I even feel like I'm glad I don't have my elementary Chinese diploma because of Zhuyin Fuhao. I was even told to forget about it and study Pinyin instead. Today, I even think about how some people from older batches graduated fourth-year Chinese but can't speak proper Mandarin or even read Pinyin properly. They were reading all the Pinyin at face value instead of applying the Bopomofo principle. In my case, I still call Pinyin, Bopomofo, because it serves that same purpose. I even call Pinyin, a Bopomofo Romanized. I still prefer to recall Pinyin using the Bopomofo sequence in contrast to the 23 consonants and 24 vowels method (read here). I don't say that it's a bad thing to excel in learning by effort. In fact, it's good to study hard but not at the cost of sleep deprivation. I also recommend schools need to stop giving too much homework and give adequate recovery periods. The problem is there's nothing to be proud of if you're an honor student under a rotten system. Even worse, some parents transferred their children to schools with bad track records in honesty because they could buy the grades.

The education system should be what it is--to educate. There's no real education in just memorizing without understanding. Sure, we still need to teach subjects that are "deemed useless" by teenagers. I may have hated mathematics in high school. However, I can now appreciate almost everything around me because I learned even those math subjects that I'm weak at namely geometry and trigonometry. I could appreciate learning biology, chemistry, and physics even when my career doesn't depend on it. Just imagine being a chef and not knowing more about math and science at all. A chef may not have to compute using advanced calculus but he or she can understand the role of basic calculus and physics. A chef ends up understanding the role of chemical change and table salt in cooking, the role of calculus in setting the right temperature, and the role of the metric system in preparing the ingredients. If education started to integrate everything into real life--it would be so much better. Maybe, I hated mathematics only because teachers were forced to focus too much on the theoretical, just another lesson for learning patience instead of saying, "Regardless of what productive career you take, you'll thank mathematics for building the stuff you'll enjoy today and later." 

This would be like the Indian story, The Scholars and the Lion. Do we want to produce more scholars like those who revived the lion or like the scholar who had common sense? What's what we need to look into the education system. It's possible to get high grades in chemistry and end up drinking muriatic acid. It's possible to get a high grade in character education and have a bad character. That's what we really need to address if the education system is producing idiots or intellectuals.