It's been some time since Miriam Defensor-Santiago (or MDS for short) died in 2016. It's hard to forget the time she grilled former PNP chief Alan LM Purisima over the demise of SAF-44. While listening to her sermon, I remember the teacher I fondly called "My MDS style teacher!" I still owe a debt of gratitude to her for helping me become better. Yes, she was feisty, and not so many parents liked her temper. However, she was better than that elementary mathematics teacher. I may have not done well in high school but I say she was a good teacher. I failed to think outside the box. She always made us think outside the box. It's easy to say, "Well, we just need good teachers and there's no problem with the system."
However, like MDS, I'd react to that and say, "Really?" That was MDS' reaction when Purisima tried to play with words. Purisima was infamous for saying that he didn't give an order and only advice. Even funnier was when Purisima said, "When I delegated the responsibility, I did not delegate the accountability." It's because whether we want to admit it or not--systems shape the behavior of people! That's why I advocate for reforming the 1987 Constitution of the Philippines' weaknesses or even going for a parliamentary constitution.
School can be taxing and stressful. It didn't matter how good the teachers were--the system always held them back. My mathematics teacher was good but I hated mathematics. As my classmate said, the mathematics teacher was just doing her job. Recalling the incident from the past, I was encouraged
to write whether or not grades-over-learning approach makes mathematics that hated. My high school economics teacher was good. However, that same high school economics teacher was held back because the education system cared more about grades than learning (read
here).
We must ask if our education system
educates or
automates students (read
here). I will bring up mathematics yet again. The problem with mathematics is how often teachers are
forced to teach students to become calculators. Mathematics textbooks can be as
boring as cardboard. The mathematician
Paul Lockart gave this lament on the way mathematics is taught:
Lockhart begins with a vivid parable in which a musician has a nightmare in which music is taught to children by rote memorization of sheet music and formal rules for manipulating notes. In the nightmare, students never actually listen to music, at least not until advanced college classes or graduate school.
The problem is that this abstract memorization and formal-method-based "music" education closely resembles the "math" education that most students receive. Formulas and algorithms are delivered with no context or motivation, with students made to simply memorize and apply them.
Part of why many students end up disliking math, or convincing themselves that they are bad at math, comes from this emphasis on formulas and notation and methods at the expense of actually deep understanding of the naturally fascinating things mathematicians explore. It's understandable that many students (and adults) get frustrated at memorizing context-free strings of symbols and methods to manipulate them.
This goes against what math is really about. The essence of mathematics is recognizing interesting patterns in interesting abstractions of reality and finding properties of those patterns and abstractions. This is inherently a much more creative field than the dry symbol manipulation taught conventionally.
As somebody who used to hate math, I can understand why I hated it that much. How often do we discuss mathematics' wonderful applications? Putting aside my idiotic math teacher for most of my elementary life, I had some good math teachers. A math teacher tried to get me to like math by explaining things. However, how often does mathematics deal with real-life examples in the classroom? It didn't matter how good the teacher was if they were bound by a lousy system. Even the best teacher can expect more hostility with mathematics, not especially because education is viewed as a competition rather than a cooperation. I'd dare say my hatred for one of my former enemies was because he was better in math than me. With that logic, he should hate me too because I was better in the English subject than him!
Whether we want to admit it or not--a bad system will beat a good person every time, in one form or another. Every teacher, good or not, is confined to the same system. It didn't matter if my high school math teacher was good. The problem was the system made her teach math the same way as the bad math teachers! Math is taught without context or application. It's often said, "What am I going to do with this anyway?" Should students wait until they take the wrong course (like taking a computer course or engineering course when they're not qualified for it) to know the applications of mathematics? I never even knew the applications of trigonometry until I took a two-year computer course. I had a good teacher but she was still beaten by the same lousy system. I don't blame her for being strict. It's because mathematics requires extreme precision in real-life applications! Do we need to wait until college before we know why we have to learn math? Unfortunately, a good math teacher may want to explain the applications but it's barely taught!
As
Pritika Nair mentions, this is how the
education system is doing education:
1. Children are treated like robots or machines
The amount of homework, notes to be copied, coupled with home assignments and related activities can get overwhelming for both children and parents. And this trend starts as early as Grade 1! When children would go to school, the only exception (and relief) was that notes were made to be completed inside the classroom. Now with online schooling, this load has also been thrust on their backs (more on the parents’ shoulders though).
I don’t say that any of the above is unimportant or unnecessary for the child. I and other parents like me aren’t able to comprehend why children as small as First Graders are subjected to “undue pressure” from the schools in terms of homework and notes completion? Do the schools perceive kids to be robot-like machines that can keep performing tasks one after the other and finish them in a jiffy?
You ask the school and they say: These notes can be completed by the child in their own time. But where do they give the time? Every day, there’s a new subject to study as per the time table, not to forget the homework and notes to be completed for the same too. This would inevitably pile up the previous day’s load on the child.
2. Children are encouraged to parrot what they learn
Mugging up concepts without really understanding their core meaning is an issue that’s existed in schools since forever. Most of us would agree and reminisce having experienced the same at some point of time in their respective schooling life. The same is being continued even today.
And now that we are parents, we hate our kids being turned into parrots too. They’re expected to score high (both from schools and parents) in the course of which, they will eventually learn well and parrot or write the same to score good marks but they would never be clear on what those concepts mean or be able to explain the same to their children in future.
3. Children feel bogged down and become disinterested
This is the most important and if not addressed promptly, may become unfavorable to all parties involved in this. Children, when laden with study pressure, may soon start losing interest in the very concept of learning - the ultimate aim for why we send kids to school in the first place. If that aim gets lost in the mind of the child, it’s the end of the story for both them and their parents - children might still study under pressure but we aren’t turning them into bright young minds for the future.
Should we ever start to wonder why people are becoming robotic? What's the use of demanding children to do good in school and then complaining about why they're acting like robots? I became robotic and students are becoming robotic. People are people and robots and robots. That's why I wanted to become a robot back when I was in elementary--so I could memorize faster. The problem is worse when there's nonstop homework. I believe teachers are forced to give homework over the weekend. It doesn't only increase the stress of students to unreasonable levels--also the teachers themselves. That may explain why teachers tend to become tormentors instead of mentors. Treat it as a programming error that needs to be rectified!
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Faculty of Medicine
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Let's think if the education system focused more on learning over grades. Grades probably won't disappear any time soon. However, we tend to focus so much on grades that I even wanted to mockingly say, "If grades were more important than learning then let's allow students to cheat! Let's legalize bribery!" However, I don't want students to cheat nor do I want to legalize bribery. As Professor Neil DeGrasse rightfully said, "Students cheat because the education system values grades over learning." I don't think he's the first one to say it nor the last. However, it's true and I hated school way back because of it. I was an eager learner but school cared more about monotonous memorizations and grading, instead of application. At first, I viewed school that way. But the more I wanted to learn, the more I realized that there was something really wrong.
World Education Forum recently published an article saying that Singapore takes different approach for Singaporean children in term of education. Starting in 2019, exams for primary years 1 and 2 students will be abolished. This approach is to make education environment better. Primary and secondary students can study in less competitive environment.
As Singapore’s Education Minster said, “Learning is not a competition”, so that student in Singapore can experience study in less discouraging comparison between peer issues. In this situation student can have more concentration and explore their self.
Primary and secondary school report books will also no longer indicate whether a pupil finishes top or bottom of the class, while subject and group averages. Singapore’s new approach to education is in stark contrast to the neighbouring states that crowd the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) education rankings.
Teachers will no longer be prone to shaming bottom students--which often happens. As I was looking at the view, "Learning is not a competition." Math classes will no longer focus on people competing to solve the problem first. I'm still in favor of math quiz bowls and contests in math classes. However, the focus should be on cooperation. Math quiz bowls are done by a group of students. If students were learning math as a class--it would mean those better in math are required to help those weaker in math. I recall how often I fought several people in math class back in the final year of K+10. I had that increasing hatred for people good in math. I believe that the system encouraged such behavior. It would mean that students as a class, will be less competitive with each other. They will be trained to work together. Sure, competition between classes will remain. However, the end of it would be to simply see what can be done to improve performance.
I believe that decades of Filipino First Policy ruined the education system. The Philippines is still stuck with obsolete education methods--not knowing how the neighboring countries are doing better. Pinoy Pride is often taught in school, such as telling people to prefer local as much as possible. Ironically, those books that teach students to buy local first, are produced with
imported stuff. Of course, I expect mockers to say, "Oh no! Not that question on imported stuff again!" They will probably say that foreigners "unfairly" own the means of production (read
here). I wonder what's their roadmap of creating a Philippines that's run only on purely Filipino-made stuff. That roadmap may end up in the same disaster as Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward. If anything, it's more than time to declare Pinoy Pride or Filipino First Policy
out of the values education books. It's because Pinoy Pride has
never helped the education system, to begin with.
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