Month: September 2018

Posted on

Gratitude

The word gratitude comes from the Latin gratus which means thankful or pleasing. A passage in the Bible talks about being thankful in all things. In modern times, various authors have used the catchphrase “an attitude of gratitude” as a key to success, greatness and happiness.

Gratitude also speaks of acceptance, of not fighting whatever comes one’s way, but taking it in stride while continuing to live one’s life. I recall a story of a zen master living in a village where he was respected and revered. People would go to him and sit with him and offer him food or drink, and he would heartily accept these and say, “Very well, thank you.”

Then one day there was a rumor that he had impregnated a young girl and the villagers lost trust in him. They greeted him with dagger looks and some even shouted and threw rotten vegetables at him. Amidst all these, he just said, “Very well, thank you.”

The young girl finally came out and accused him in public of forcing himself upon her. The villagers were enraged and drove the master out,  pelting him with sticks and stones. As he left the village, he turned around and said, “Very well, thank you,” and went to live in the nearby woods.

The girl finally delivered the baby, and was stricken by conscience, because she had falsely accused the master. In truth it was the village chief’s son who was the infant’s father, but they conspired to blame the old man for fear of the chief’s wrath. The girl confessed, and the villagers went to the woods to ask forgiveness from the old master and beg him to come live with them again.

The old man simply said, “Very well, thank you,” and went back to live in the village.

Having just celebrated my 45th year of existence, I look back and find so many things for which I am grateful:

For a dad who worked hard to provide me with material comfort and a great education; who was stern in chipping off my rough edges, yet reasonable enough to allow me enough freedom to spread my wings;

For a mom who talks tough but has a great heart, and always ready to give a box of pomelos;

For siblings each with their own quirks, but always caring in their own special way;

For the endless stream of dogs my mom collected, and whom I grew up loving and crying over when they passed on, and for the two that I now have, who still adore me though I call them stupid and crazy;

For the shelves full of books that were my greatest sources of ideas and imagination, for great authors who welcomed me into their worlds and universes;

For great teachers who inspired me, and for the not-so-great ones, who taught me to learn things on my own anyway;

For former students who come back and remind me how crazy I was;

For friends with whom I can share genuine laughter and silence; and for unfriends who remind me never to be like them;

For my three not-so-kids anymore who are growing up really fast, who give me joy just by their being;

And for my one and only wife, who sees all the good in me, and all the bad as well, but loves me anyway;

These past 45 years have been very well, thank you.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles atwww.freethinking.me.

Posted on

A Better Way

One of the first mistakes I made as a rookie teacher was focusing too much on the material as well as the strategies of teaching. I thought that the more material I could cover and the more strategies I knew and implemented in the classroom, I would be a better teacher. At around that time, I also joined Toastmasters in order to improve my public speaking skills.

And all that was good and interesting for me, but did they really make me a good teacher?

I would soon discover one very important truth — one that all teachers know implicitly when they were students, but can’t seem to grasp once they stand in front of the classroom: Students don’t really care about the material, and neither have they any driving desire to cover as much of it as possible.

The one question always on students’ minds (whether they verbalize it or not) and the one question any teacher has to answer first before getting anyone marginally interested in what he has to say is this: Why is this subject important in my life? Will it be useful for me if I plan to be this or that in the future?

Teachers, please don’t give the standard “You’ll need this in college” line because while that answer may make some students shut up, it will never satisfy.

I’ve taught several subject areas but I noticed this question usually pops up when I’m teaching Math. Someone will eventually ask why they need x,y, or z in their lives, and I’ll tell them straight off: “Honestly, around 90% of you who won’t proceed to engineering or math-intensive courses or professions won’t really need this. But here’s the reality, you need to learn enough of the basics of what I’m teaching in order to graduate. And I promise I’ll only cover the basics. There’s material here that may be good for those of you who want to be math majors but I’ll leave that to when you want to pursue that path in your life.”

“A secondary lesson here is that there are things in life we need to do, even if we don’t feel like doing them, if we want to achieve a certain objective.”

“For example,” I would ask, “how many of you want to graduate?”

All hands would go up. So I would say, “Well passing this subject is unfortunately a prerequisite for graduation. Now you can fight and resist it, but that will only make it harder for you, or you can try to look at it as a new challenge — something new to learn, and that might make it less painful. I am under no illusion that all of you will come love math after this, but you need to know enough of it to pass it and my role is to simplify the material and help you along the way. I understand that you would rather not study this but this is how the system works so until we find a better way, this is how it goes.”

That was then, before I discovered democratic schools. Now I have indeed found a better way.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles atwww.freethinking.me.

Posted on

Learning Democracy (Part 2)

Part 1 | Part 2

What if we began practicing democracy in school?

Not the pretend democracy we give when we let students choose, for example, whether they want the quiz on Friday or on Monday; or the playhouse democracy we give to student councils and school papers, where they can decide whatever project they want or whatever article they want to print, but all it takes is a word from the principal or the school board and that project can be instantly vetoed, that article immediately censored.

But what if students’ decisions actually mattered? What if they voted on having no uniforms or having no haircut rules and that decision was actually respected? What if students could decide how the school spent its money? What if students voted on which teachers (including administrators) to hire and which ones to fire? What if students could actually choose what they wanted to do — whether it’s to read a pocketbook or to chat with their friends or even to play all day?

You may think that is a recipe for disaster for any school and it wouldn’t last a year, or even a week, but that is what Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, Massachusetts has been doing since day one for the past 50 years. Not only has it survived but it has thrived and become a model for similar types of schools in different cities and countries. Its graduates go on to colleges or trade schools of their choice and are in diverse fields and professions.

Hal Sadofsky, one of the school’s earliest graduates, went on to get a Ph.D. in Mathematics at M.I.T. and is currently an Associate Professor in the University of Oregon. He has this to say: “The most fundamental educational lesson we hope our students will learn is that they are responsible for their own education, and in fact for their own lives. Actually internalizing this, and all that goes with it is the best lesson they can have for the rest of their lives. I believe that it is important for people to acquire knowledge and skills, but I don’t believe I can or should force them to do so. Much more important is for our children to learn that if they value something, it is worth working for, and that if they have a goal they care about, they need to take responsibility for realizing it.”

And the way this lesson is imparted is not through dry lectures but through actual experience, where the student feels and knows that his decisions do matter, and no adult is going to come along and say, “Well that’s interesting, but now it’s time to come in and learn your grammar,” or something along those lines.

Sudbury founder, Daniel Greenberg, says that even he has no special authority or tenure in the school. He has one vote like everybody else, and he always has to perform well in the eyes of the community, or risk being voted out.

In an essay entitled The Significance of the Democratic Model, Greenberg writes, “To educate successfully for democracy, the real life surroundings of the children we seek to educate must be democratic in every respect, through and through, to the core and down to the last detail. The world of the children we want to reach must be a democratic reality, so the children wishing to master it will have no choice but to master the whole intricacy of its democratic structure. Education for democracy demands democratic schools. There is no other way to make it effective.”

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles atwww.freethinking.me.

Posted on

Learning Democracy (Part 1)

Part 1 | Part 2

We love the idea of democracy, of being free to choose our own path and forge our own destiny. We enshrine the ideals of liberty and celebrate as heroes those who fight and lay down their lives for its survival. Yet, a lot of people do not know how to handle their freedom. They think that freedom is license to do whatever they want, even if what they do already curtails or restricts another person’s freedom. They do not understand that the price of sustaining a free society is for individuals to think and act responsibly, to create a space of mutual respect, only then can people in that society be truly free.

I have recently been watching videos of traffic apprehensions by the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) and it is both funny and sad how people caught violating the rules seem to think that they have a special privilege for breaking the rules. They do all sorts of things to escape the consequences — they try to run, they try to reason, they threaten, they appeal to the “unfairness” of the law, and so on. Expand this to different facets of our political and economic lives and you see the same thing — people try to cheat on paying taxes, they try to evade import tariffs, they aim for special exemptions from the rule because they have connections in this or that office.

We love the idea of democracy but don’t know how to live in one.

I believe one of the fundamental reasons why is that we were never taught how to live in a democracy. In fact, our school system, which is supposed to “educate” us and prepare us for life, is one of the most autocratic institutions around — and we spend our formative years there. We spend our teenage years, and even our early adult years there. And then when we’re done and get thrown out into the “real” world, we are expected to know how to handle democracy?

What do children really learn in school? Why do I say it is an autocratic institution? Let’s count them off:

  1. Children learn from early on that their choices don’t matter. Little Johnny wants to play with dolls. “No, Johnny, dolls are for girls,” says the teacher.  “You can’t play with them.” Little Annie wants to spend all day drawing. “You can’t do that, Annie,” says the teacher, “You have to learn your Arithmetic first, and then Reading, and then some Science.”
    “But I want to learn how to make cartoons,” says Annie.
    “No,” says the teacher. “You have to learn the more important things first.”
  2. Children learn that a lot of power resides with the authorities. If you want to control that power, you either have to challenge the authorities, or you have to suck up to them. So kids learn never to express their true opinions about a matter, but to say what the teacher wants to hear. They learn that they can sometimes circumvent rules by sweet-talking a teacher, or by using intimidation tactics like, “You can’t touch me. Do you know my uncle is the head of the school board?”
  3. Children learn that their lives are mostly controlled by other people, whether it’s the teacher, the principal, or their parents pressuring them to get high grades. They learn to shut down their dreams, to not care, to go through the motions of “learning” just enough to pass the tests and move on to the next level.

By the time they’re done, we wonder why so many young graduates are unfocused and don’t know what to do with their lives. Look again at how they were “educated” and you need not wonder any more.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.