Category: Essays

In 1979, rock band Pink Floyd came out with a song called “Another Brick in the Wall” which speaks out against rigid, traditional schooling. The lyrics go:

We don’t need no education.
We don’t need no thought control.
No dark sarcasm in the classroom,
Teacher leave them kids alone.

Hey, teachers, leave them kids alone!
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall.
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.

Amidst the recent drama involving radio broadcaster Raffy Tulfo and the public school teacher he lambasted for allegedly humiliating a student, this song seems an appropriate background theme. I am not here to elaborate on that case, however. Many other people have made their own commentaries and I think enough has been said for one to go through, read, and make their own judgment.

What I want to focus on, is the system, the culture, of education that the song is protesting. The lyrics make the teachers to be the villains, but in reality, teachers are as much the victims of the system as the students. We have been programmed to think of schools as factories, as tools for shaping society, for providing human resource needs — very much like “another brick in the wall” of humanity that we are building. And teachers are victims because they think their job is to produce bricks, not humans.

The math teach thinks everybody needs to learn long division. The English teacher thinks everyone needs to properly differentiate between an adverb and an adjective. The Filipino teacher thinks everyone needs to read Noli Me Tangere and the History teacher is surprised if a teenager does not know who Andres Bonifacio was.

Think about that for a second, and notice your own reaction to it. Now let me ask, why would it be surprising for a teenager not to know who Andres Bonifacio was? Does Bonifacio matter in their daily life? Does it help them cross the road? Do they get money for knowing him? Why should it matter? If you still insist that it does, then let me ask you then, does it matter in your life that you know Andres Bonifacio? How does that knowledge impact your everyday life? Is it useful in your work? Does it give your life meaning?

Now, let this sink in. No one NEEDS to know who Andres Bonifacio was, nor long division, nor adverbs and adjectives, nor Noli Me Tangere. Am I saying these are unimportant? No. That is not my point.

But this is what I’m driving at. The system has fooled us into thinking that to be an “educated”person, an “educated” Filipino, we need to have all these little bits of knowledge within us. We need to be bricks with the right ingredients.

If we can satisfactorily spit out to the teacher what he/she wants to hear, we get that congratulatory handshake and that little piece of printed paper certifying that we are “educated.”

But is that what education really means?

More next week.

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

When confronted with a problem, most of us are trained to look for answers and solutions. Very few take the time to look at the problem itself.

For example, if I were to present the problem: Pedro has 8 oranges in one hand and 10 oranges in the other, what does he have?

Most people would straightaway answer 18 oranges. One clever student however, answered, “Pedro has very large hands.”

Or how about this: Julie has a pile of 100 chocolate bars and 200 candies. She eats 52 chocolate bars and 112 candies. What does Julie now have?

Again, most of you would start computing and say, Julie now has 48 chocolate bars and 88 candies.

But then this smart aleck answers, “Diabetes. Julie now has diabetes.”

In school we are trained to ask, is that the right answer? But in real life, in business, and in many other areas, I more often than not been forced to ask, is that the right question? How you frame the question is more crucial than finding the answer. The right question puts you in a state of mind that is open and creative while the wrong question can make the situation seem very limiting and constrictive.

These days, educators are asking all the wrong questions — How do we raise test scores? How do we increase our school’s college passing rate? How do we get kids interested in our lessons? How do we get them to sit still and listen and take notes? What are effective teaching strategies? What topics need to be added to the curriculum?

What we ought to be asking, instead, are the following: How do children learn? And how can we best support their interests? How do we continually make ourselves relevant to them? What can we learn from them? How do we help prepare them for a future we may not see? How do we help them make difficult decisions?

What do you think?

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

Last week, I discussed the first of a 3-point agenda of DepEd called Digital Rise, about how wrong it was to expect everyone to learn the same skills and information as everybody else via a fixed curriculum.

This time, I want to tackle the 2nd and 3rd points — which is to preload material on teachers laptops, mapped to the curriculum, as well as to provide each learner with their own device to access e-Learning resources.

While I understand the idea that pre-loading material on laptops makes such information accessible to far flung areas that do not have internet access, I also see the danger in the wording that makes DepEd think it has the power to decide what sort of materials to preload. I’m sure there will be a lot of materials on mathematics and science, but what if the child’s interest doesn’t lean towards any of those?

What if a child is interested in learning and mastering card magic, or playing billiards, or singing? Will those be part of their e-Learning resources? DepEd might shake its mighty head and say those aren’t important but who are they to say what is or what is not important to a child? Accomplished magicians in places like Las Vegas can earn more in a year than our public school teachers earn in their lifetime.

Who are we to curate, censor and filter a child’s interest?

In fact, probably the only point I can get behind is providing learners with their own devices, but I fear that even then, they will try to lock the devices to access only materials they think are “educational.”

The best would be just to provide kids with a basic and inexpensive Android device, a place where they can access wifi, and leave them be.

There is a saying, often misattributed to Einstein, that goes “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.” That, in a nutshell is what DepEd does with its focus on curriculum, on standardized testing, and adding this or that subject because they think that’s what the child needs — never mind what the children themselves think.

It is tragically funny how DepEd uses the word “learner-centered” in their documents when what they do is anything but that. To be truly learner-centered means respecting and supporting the interest of the child, not to create a curriculum and then try to have the child fit in there.

To be truly learner-centered, one must learn not how to control, but how to set free.

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