Category: Essays

Posted on

Much Ado About Filipino

The Supreme Court’s recent decision to uphold the constitutionality of the K-12 program resulted in Filipino and Panitikan (Philippine Literature)  no longer being required core subjects in college. Of course, as expected, there were many howls of protest — those whose jobs and livelihood were affected, and those who feel that this will further erode our children’s sense of nationalism and love for country.

I am, however, not among those.

Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate the language and some aspects of culture. I watch some Filipino films, the few good ones we get anyway. I enjoy Filipino music and am an advocate of Filipino Martial Arts. Oh and yes, I read Bob Ong’s books and if you haven’t done so yet, go pick up a copy of A B N K K B S N P L A Ko. No, this isn’t a paid endorsement. There is so much fun and learning in that book — more than 14 years of Filipino classes from elementary to college.

More than any other subject, Filipino (which is really mostly Tagalog) traumatized me. Growing up, the only place I spoke it was in school. At home, I spoke Fookien Chinese to my parents and siblings. I spoke Bisaya to almost everyone else. I read English books and comics and watched English shows and movies. There was virtually no practical use for me to learn Filipino except to pass the subject, and I struggled with the grammar and vocabulary of a language I hardly spoke. Even in school, using Filipino was limited because we had a “Speak English” rule and in many instances, you could be fined for “speaking in dialect.”

I don’t believe that forcing a language down one’s throat will result in any sort of appreciation nor produce nationalism or love for country. What I felt was resentment, then outright hatred for the subject. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the language or refused to speak it. In fact, I believe I speak it quite well and there was a time I liked reading comics like Zuma and even Darna.

But the structured approach didn’t work for me, and of course, the low grades I got didn’t help and simply contributed to the downward spiral.

Nationalism and love for country does not have to be rooted in language. In the decades that we have been teaching the Filipino subject to millions who have passed through the school system, what do we have to show by way of nationalism and love for country? We can’t even be bothered to walk a few more steps to cross at pedestrian lanes. We throw trash anywhere instead of looking for a garbage can or just putting the trash in our pockets for proper disposal later. We smoke in no smoking areas and park in no parking zones. We beat red lights and many still beat their wives and kids. We cheat on anything we can get away with — taxes, work hours, allowances, or our spouses.

Love for country is about respecting and caring enough for your fellow human, and that language is universal.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

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

Posted on

A Final Word on Finland

Having spent the past few weeks dissecting Finland’s educational system and comparing it to my preferred model, the Sudbury Valley School, has been enlightening for me. I’m not sure if you, my readers, have been similarly enlightened. But they do say that the person who learns most from any lesson is the teacher.

I guess the task of trying to understand the strengths of each model, and then trying to simplify and explain those models in small 500-word chunks (which is my weekly limit for this column) forced me to think of them in ways I had not thought of before.

So what’s my final verdict on the Finland system?

In a previous article, I mentioned seeing it as a halfway point between the strict confines of traditional schooling and the almost total freedom in a Sudbury school. I also mentioned the reason it is so successful in their country is because it moves towards liberation from the rigidity of the old systems.

In fact, an article recently caught my attention that Finland was already considering removing subjects from the curriculum in favor of a more holistic approach:

“Subject-specific lessons – an hour of history in the morning, an hour of geography in the afternoon – are already being phased out for 16-year-olds in the city’s upper schools. They are being replaced by what the Finns call “phenomenon” teaching – or teaching by topic. For instance, a teenager studying a vocational course might take “cafeteria services” lessons, which would include elements of maths, languages (to help serve foreign customers), writing skills and communication skills…More academic pupils would be taught cross-subject topics such as the European Union – which would merge elements of economics, history (of the countries involved), languages and geography.”

Instead of teaching various trivia per “subject,” they now want students to understand “topics” perhaps like global warming or pollution or recycling. And if it needs a little math or science or history along the way, then that gets taught as well, but it is now relevant because it helps the students understand the topic. It’s not just taught because “hey, you need this in college” or “it’s part of the curriculum” or something like that.

If I were to start a school, I would still go with the Sudbury model. I think it’s the best educational model there is. But for those already running traditional schools, shifting to a Sudbury model might be too radical and would bring a host of other issues that might overwhelm them. The best bet for them is to shift to the Finland model which I think can be done quite easily.

The problem lies not in the “how” as Tim Walker already lays down so many ways schools can start implementing the Finland system. The question is, are the school’s stakeholders — administrators, teachers, parents, students — willing to shift their mindset to accept this more liberal and collaborative approach to education?

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

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

Posted on

Finland vs Sudbury (Part 3)

Tim Walker related an interesting story in the latter part of his book, about the Sudbury Valley School. He showed his students a short Youtube clip featuring the school and what it was all about. He thought that his students would love to be in that school.

Surprisingly though, his students thought it was “too radical” and they weren’t very comfortable with that. They particularly found something “wrong” about a school that allowed its kids to play video games all day. In the end, they still preferred having a teacher guide them.

What’s my take on this?

Well, first of all, I think it’s safe to say that most students in Finland enjoy school, or at the very least, they don’t hate it as much as in other places where school is more rigid and traditional. They have an easy schedule, frequent breaks, cool teachers who don’t get mad at them easily, or pressure them unreasonably — hey, what’s not to like? Sounds like a lot of fun.

Here is the danger, and take note that I am not saying this to disparage the teachers or administrators as if they were secretly plotting something diabolical. No, the danger comes from the system itself which conditions the students to have someone “guiding” them all the time, so much so that they feel uncomfortable when you take that guidance away.

Greenberg calls teachers in the traditional system as “entertainers.” Good teachers are usually good entertainers — they keep the class interested and motivated to “learn,” and I would think that there would be a lot of great teacher-entertainers in Finland (simply because they support each other and are not that stressed from the more rigid requirements of their traditional counterparts). Because of this, students feel they are “learning a lot” from these teachers and taking that away would somehow diminish their learning.

But that is wrong.

What each person needs to develop is a sense of identity and direction, to know that his or her choice matters, and that others can respect that choice — whether or not it seems good or bad. In a Sudbury school, nobody tells you what to do. You do what you choose to do, and you either reap the benefits of doing so or suffer the full brunt of its consequences. Sudbury staff do not entertain the kids nor do they feel any need to do so. If a child wants to learn something, he may sometimes even need to convince the staff to teach him.

The process is slower at first because you have to wait for each individual’s maturity to kick in. You don’t just gather them all by a certain age group and begin lecturing them about this and that because the “experts” say that’s the right age to begin teaching that material. Each person eventually has to develop that inner drive and say, this is what I want to do, this is what I want to learn, and no one can stop me.

That’s the value I see in a Sudbury school.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

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

Posted on

Finland vs Sudbury (Part 2)

I see the Finland model as a halfway house between traditional education and the Sudbury model. If traditional education is slavery, then Finland would be voluntary servitude, and Sudbury would be willful independence.

The prospect of giving kids almost unbridled freedom to do whatever they want (within limits to rules they agree to, and which they have the power to challenge) is scary. Let’s face it, freedom is scary. That is why the Sudbury model seems so radical and difficult to wrap our heads around.

If you look at why the Finland model works, it’s because it takes what is in traditional education and liberates it a bit — more breaks, looser rules, more flexible schedules, reduced homework, and so on. Yet though students in that system may feel more free and relaxed, they are still bound by curriculum. They are still subject to the whims of the “experts” telling them what and how much to study. They are still subject to the whims and biases of their teacher, and are still bound to do things just to please the teacher and get a good grade.

The teacher in this system (as in a traditional system) is under immense pressure to entertain, to make the lessons interesting so that they can engage the students. But such engagement can be misguided and short-lived. Sudbury founder Daniel Greenberg told a story about when he was still teaching physics in a traditional college: One of his former students came back to him and said, “You ruined me.”

A perplexed Greenberg asked, “Why? What do you mean?”

The student replied, “Well, when I was in your physics class, you made it so interesting that I thought it was what I wanted to major in and I did. But now that I’m done, I realize it’s not really what I want to do with my life.”

That story really struck me because it showed how being a good “teacher” can actually be a bad thing.

Greenberg tends to view these attempts to make education friendlier and less harsh (also in progressive systems like Montessori/Waldorf/etc.) as more dangerous. At least, in traditional education, the kids hate it and know who the enemy is. The progressive schools, however, seduce the kids into liking the system and they think it’s the real thing.

Though I understand his point, I tend to take a less extreme view and I see reforms such as the progressives and the Finland model as better than nothing, and it would also be more doable for the thousands of traditional schools we have today.

However, think about this: If the Finland model became so successful because it introduced small liberties and took baby-steps towards more freedom and less restraints, how much more could that effect be multiplied if you went all out with freedom, if you took giant leaps instead of baby steps?

Yes, it is scary and unpredictable and open-ended, but so is life. And if education is to prepare our kids for the “real thing,” then that is what they should be immersed in.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

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

Posted on

Finland vs Sudbury (Part 1)

For the past two weeks, I had been writing about the Finnish educational system. I would now like to compare it with the democratic school system like Sudbury Valley School, of which I had also previously written.

(If you’re just getting on board my column now, you can read up on my past articles to learn more about these two systems — just click on the following articles to get a more extensive background:

This list is slightly altered from the newspaper version to link directly to the articles)

As a short recap, the Finland model is not that far from the traditional schooling that we know, except that it has a lot of breaks in between subjects (15 minutes after every 45-minute lecture), minimal homework, and offers students more autonomy and collaborative opportunities for both teachers and students.

The Sudbury model or the democratic school model, however, is probably something 99% of you haven’t heard of. The shortest possible way to describe it a school where students are free to do whatever they want, provided that it is legal and within the school rules; and the school rules are decided by votation by both teachers (called staff) and students.

I will not describe the Sudbury model in detail here as I have done that before, and it will take a lot of space. But I believe there is a question on the minds of those reading about it for the first time here: “How can kids learn anything if you just let them do what they want? They’ll just play video games all day!”

The short answer to that is that Sudbury has been turning out productive citizens for the past 50 years (it started in 1968), and according to their studies, around 80% of their graduates go on to the college of their choice. Many schools in other countries have also studied and adopted the Sudbury model. So yes, even if Sudbury had students who played, or fished, or chatted with their friends all day, that doesn’t mean they didn’t learn anything and they grew up to be businessmen, artists, and professionals in various fields just like most everybody else who went through a traditional education.

So given these two systems, which one do I think is better?

I am biased towards the Sudbury model. I happen to think that it is the most liberating concept in education. Sudbury founder, Daniel Greenberg, likes to compare traditional school with prison (and many kids, and even you, may  feel the same way). And the reason it’s prison is because the student has very little freedom — someone else tells him what to study, and for how long, and how he’s supposed to behave, and what he’s supposed to wear, and so on. He is subject to the authority of the teachers and the principal, like prisoners have to listen to their guards or the warden, or risk getting punished.

Now, that is traditional schooling in a nutshell, and if you look at Finland, it still follows the basic framework of traditional education. Everyone has to study their reading, writing and arithmetic, and history, science, geography, algebra, trigonometry, and all these other subjects that other people have deemed “essential” to basic education.

What Finland has done, however,  is to make prison more palatable.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

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