Teacher’s pay has gone up considerably since, but still below the rise in
the cost of living. Still, there are grave gaps in training that may not be
preparing would-be teachers to match a new generation of more knowledgeable
students. Ms. Cruz asks rhetorically: “Are teachers themselves, competent
readers?” To answer this, let me quote one of the online comments arising
from Ms. Cruz’s commentary:
• “A year ago, I read the final draft of a thesis of a student about to
graduate from a supposedly good school near UN Avenue. Just from the first
couple of pages I could already tell that the paragraphs were lifted from
different sources. The abrupt shifting of ideas from one paragraph to the
next were so glaring and so were the different writing styles of each
paragraph. A clear case of plagiarism. I asked her if her thesis adviser has
read and approved her draft. She said yes. I then asked her if her mentor
did not say anything about her copying from other sources. She blushed and
with a nervous smile asked me how I knew that. I just winked and smiled back
at her. A month later, she graduated with a degree in Education.”
I wish I could tell you that this is an isolated case. The fact is, this is
more widespread than one would care to admit. Some years back, I had a
chance to audit a class of would-be candidates for an education degree. I
still have copies of heavily plagiarized papers and theses with no
attribution whatsoever. And submissions so poorly written, you wonder how
they can demand anything better from students. From the above comment,
there are at least three others who could have been willfully blind with the
plagiarist; the thesis adviser, the mentor, and the prof who accepts the
paper. It is a multilevel issue at every stage of a person’s education.
Here’s a widely read editorial that could give us a glimpse of the
pervasiveness of this problem.
(https://opinion.inquirer.net/119836/imeekwento ) The individual in this
instance is in the top tier of the newly elected senate of our country and
served multiple terms as governor. Implicit in this example is the support
the masses had given to this politician. Do we even give a damn about issues
like this? Rigour and discipline in education is a reflection of many things
in our society.
As long as we are paying teachers with a pittance, we will never be able to
attract the best and the brightest. Look what has happened with math
teachers. The demand for math talent today from the computer industry alone
far exceeds supply. With pay of maybe upwards of 20 x more and without the
stress from a roomful of potential anarchists who will not hesitate to tell
you where to go, these teachers will take their talent elsewhere.
What is the ideal teacher for today’s children? Dynamism and empathy,
innovative and engaging, trump the dedication of old. Today’s children
require more than the usual. What are we doing, for example, to shore up
their emotional intelligence? The 3 R’s ( reading, (w) riting,(a)rithmetic),
which have been the mainstay of education for generations is inadequate for
the hyper-connected youth of today. The multiple learning platforms of the
future requires critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and
creativity, ( the 4 C’s, Yuval Harari calls them in his book “21 Lessons for
the 21st. Century “). A’s and B’s don’t mean much if you can’t think and
talk! Creating a job rather than looking for one requires a lot of
self-motivation. How many of us came out of school with this kind of
mindset?
The teacher’s role as a fountain of knowledge is doomed. We are generating
more information and expertise than ever before. No one individual can ever
be capable of amassing the amount of data available today. Everybody has
instant access to information, and the ability to retain it (aka
memorization ) is not as crucial ( as defunct as penmanship and shorthand ).
Cognitive energy has a more critical priority in today’s educational
environment. The teacher’s part is to help students realize the 4 C’s.
(Read: Japan’s Soka School System )
In years past, we could be complacent and be “learned” after 12 years of
school ( plus maybe four years of post-secondary ). We could rest assured
that we could be reasonably up-to-date with what we have learned in 16 years
of schooling, for a long time. However, ” the accumulated wisdom and
intuitions of older people are not as valuable as they once were,” says Tom
Freidman in his book ” Thank You For Being Late ” Most of us read, heard and
smelled the same things day in and day out, year in and year out, for
years. Well, not anymore! The exponential growth in everything in the last
20 years has left us decidedly “out educated.”
The traditional institutions ( the Church, for instance ) can’t keep up. On
reproductive technology alone, they have given up designating “sin” for
anything outside the “natural.” If you hear a padre labeling a child,
“illegitimate,” you should call the police! ( at any rate, this crowd moves
at such glacial pace that they will never be able to keep up. The Church’s
condemnation of Galileo (for suggesting that the Earth revolved around the
Sun and not the other way around) and its eventual mea culpa, took 359
years after Pope John Paul II admitted its mistake in 1991. It’s too much to
expect anything more from the leadership of old men, whose guide book was
written in the first century. It’s par for the course!)
In the ’60s, it was common to see other Asian students enrolled in Phil
Universities; UP, FEU, UST, MAPUA, etc. Today, if you notice any of them in
our Universities ( the Phil has 1,943 universities and colleges as of
2017 ), it’s because it’s cheaper and they pick up English on the side. In
the top 300 in Asia, only UP Diliman had managed to be in it ( 225th place
roughly). Thailand has 10 in the list while Pakistan shows 7 in the top
300. ( the top ten in Asia is shared between South Korea, Hongkong, China,
and Singapore )
Why? As with the church, we never kept up with the pace of change in
emerging technologies and curricula. There is virtually no R&Din our
universities. (UP scored a measly 10.6% on research ) And probably no funds
to sustain modernization ( I am guessing that endowment from wealthy alumni
is uncommon in our universities. By comparison, couple Gerald Schwartz (
Onex ) and Heather Reisman ( Indigo-Chapters ) gift of $100 million to the U
of Toronto is so large that U of T is opening the Schwartz-Reisman
Innovation Centre ( Biomedical Research and Artificial Intelligence ) This
is but one of many before them. Where do you think our universities get
funding? Tuition fees!
Unless we are keeping up with personal innovation, new social contacts, and
meeting the demands of the accelerated pace of change, we are just treading
the educational water and no more! More than ever, the goal of lifelong
learning has never been so relevant today. Sorry, TFC will not cut it!
But even these, could be on the margins now. In this era of algorithms,
artificial intelligence, and 5 G’s, we can bet that even in our lifetime,
there will be a new educational paradigm in short order.
Edwin de Leon, M.Ed.( edwingdeleon@gmail.com ) is a retired Science teacher,
high school principal, and secular humanist. He is an occasional
commentator for the Phil. Daily Inquirer.