Love for learning, and not learning as suffering
Credit to Author: ANTONIO CONTRERAS| Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2019 16:56:44 +0000
ONE rainy morning, when classes were already suspended — except for Makati, as usual — I saw a young boy standing anxiously by the front door of our condominium. He was in full school uniform, carrying an obviously heavy backpack, with his left hand holding a bag full of books and yet another bag on the right hand. I told him that classes had already been suspended by Mayor Isko Moreno. He replied that he was attending school in Makati, not Manila. He was waiting for his service to arrive. His parents already left for work, and his nanny went back to their unit to tend to his baby sister who was left behind.
As a father about to become a grandfather soon, and a teacher, my heart broke at the sight of that boy, waiting for his school service, physically saddled with his heavy bags. It is an image that speaks loudly to the fact that we are punishing this boy. We are inflicting on him the heavy burden of learning, both physically and psychologically.
His reality is a world where he has parents who are also working to provide for him and his baby sister.
He is left to the care of a nanny who is also caring for his sister. He is in a system where one local government unit thinks that rains and floods respect political boundaries and only its citizens are going to its schools. And he goes to a school system where the workload is brought home, where we turn children into kargador, where the level and depth of learning is now measured by the weight of their bags.
People expect that his parents should share the burden of educating him by ensuring he does his homework, yet they may no longer have the time due to their own work commitments, and that doesn’t make them irresponsible parents. He is taught by teachers who are up to their necks with too much paper work that they have no choice but to give homework assignments.
And we hear adults from a generation where mothers stayed home to teach children, where traffic is not so bad that one could go to school and go home for lunch, and where the idea of a school service was a relatively unknown thing, and where rains and floods were not seen as triggers for a class cancellation.
We tell children to be responsible and endure the challenges of schooling, as if being left behind waiting for transport service, lugging heavy bags full of things that are supposed to be the fount of learning is not being responsible.
This is not the kind of education I want for our children. We should cultivate in them a love for learning, and not learning as a form of suffering.
The 1959 Declaration on the Rights of the Child specifically states that children must be “given an education which will promote [their] general culture and enable [them], on the basis of equal opportunity, to develop [their] abilities, [their] individual judgment, and [their] sense of moral and social responsibility.” It also further reminds us that “the best interest of the [children] shall be the guiding principle of those responsible for [their] education and guidance,” and that this responsibility primarily lies with their parents. And more relevant to the issue of regulating the practice of giving homework, the declaration stressed that children “shall have full opportunity for play and recreation, which should be directed to the same purposes as education.”
There are people, including parents and educators, who criticize the pending legislative initiatives to strike a balance between education and play and recreation. They argue that this is something that should be left to the prerogative of schools and parents. But these critics should be reminded that the 1959 Declaration mandates society and the public authorities to endeavor to promote the enjoyment by children of their right to play and recreation. In fact, it is implied that children have a right to a restful sleep.
When children suffer the burden of lugging heavy bags, of uncoordinated and poorly designed assignments, and of enduring traffic jams between their homes and schools, then it becomes necessary for the state to come in to protect the rights of the child.
What legislation should not do, however, is to impose hard prohibitions. The law should only specify policy frameworks and establish processes to ensure a healthy and balanced environment for children. Instead of penalties, the law should provide incentives and support systems for more innovative teaching and learning.
If there is one aspect that needs to be fixed, it should be the maximum number of hours children need to be engaged in classroom and class-related activities. But this period should not be decided in the law which would require another law to amend should conditions change, instead should be left to a mechanism that would enable a science-based determination.
Any assignment done off campus and outside class hours should be compensated by time off from face-to-face and classroom activities. And if blended learning and flipped classroom strategies should be adopted, then it should be designed in an age-appropriate manner and in such a way that students are given time within class hours to perform the online activities for blended learning, or do their off-classroom readings and other content-familiarization activities in the case of flipped classrooms. Hence, the preference is for these to be done within class hours and, if possible, on campus.
To properly implement this strategy, there should be a close coordination between and among subject teachers to ensure that the off-campus and off-hour activities given to students are integrated, holistic and rationalized, instead of on a per-subject basis. That is, learning goals and activities for different subjects should be more coordinated and integrated, rather than treated as separate and isolated.