“Ma, pa… I’m not sure if I want to be a nurse. I really don’t know what course to take. I don’t know what I want.”
My voice was shaking, and my tears kept falling down on my cheeks, as I conversed with my parents about college.
“Niks, your hands are gentle, which would be very useful in injecting medicines for your future patients! You’re also good at caring for other people. You are very patient. You fit in Nursing.”
“But I don’t like blood. I fainted lots of times whenever I saw blood. Remember when I was pulling a flower candy out of a wire, and then suddenly, almost half of the wire went in my palm? There was so much blood, I thought I died.”
“It’s just in the beginning. You’ll overcome it.”
They were right.
I did overcome my fear of seeing blood.
(Well, after I fainted for like 2–3 of my OR cases, not to mention the number of times I lost consciousness because of heat exhaustion. Yup, my body kept on failing me…and my parents. My mom was a known OR nurse and clinical instructor in my school, which made everything worse. Total nightmare!)
However, after I passed the board exams, I realized that being a registered nurse is way more than that. I spent 4 years of my life in Nursing, but I felt like I was still not ready to work in a hospital.
The clinics/hospitals where I submitted my resume even confirmed it! Because during my time, we were required to undergo lots of training first before we could work there. And the training courses cost a lot!
In my mind, I didn’t want my parents to spend more money as they already paid a lot for my college.
That’s the time, my soul-searching started.
I read mostly Sir Ken Robinson’s and Bo Sanchez’ books.
The enlightenment finally came. Thank God for these people…
All the things I love doing, plus what I’m good at doing aligned at where I am now — education.
So when I got my teaching license, I promised myself never to do anything that will lead my students to what I experienced.
I told myself to search for the best strategies to help as many students as I can, so they would not waste so much time like I did.
And here’s what I found out.
Are you ready for this?
Most schools don’t prepare the students enough for the 21st century society. Schools, especially in the Philippines, are still like factories. The systems that they created are under the principles of linearity, conformity and standardization. Most time in traditional schools is wasted on waiting, because they have to work in a way that all of the students in a big class would be accommodated — lining up straight, being quiet, etc.
Unfortunately, most students continue to be educated in the same way as they were in the past, being taught a standardised curriculum through rote learning and individualised testing, at a one-size-fits-all pace. Far too many students are struggling to learn because they are disengaged and lack motivation.
-Maxine Driscoll, head of a school in Australia
This educational system worked before, but it was because their economy was industrialized. Industrial economy solely focused on production, consumption, and distribution of goods. They didn’t have machines, so they created schools to produce people who could follow orders easily, write as neatly as everyone else and respond and compute quickly.
But now, we already have machines. Lots of machines. Gadgets. Internet.
Our economy is now informational, which focuses on the production, consumption, and distribution of information. Our society is now looking at the number of skills that are acquired by students. Grades, labels, and titles are less important already.
We are living in an ocean of information. How come the important data are still ignored and not being used??
Why do most teachers now still choose their ego over what works best for children in the 21st century?
Why are we still holding on to something that doesn’t work anymore — something that’s no longer relevant?
According to studies, most companies are looking for employees who demonstrate these skills: creative thinking, good communication, problem-solving, and collaboration.
Unfortunately, more research says that schools kill creativity, curiosity, and individuality because students are being asked to conform all the time. There are also less opportunities to build the skills needed for the life outside school such as collaboration, problem-solving, and the like. Everything is fast-paced in a traditional setting, that when you ask a kid about his/her day, they wouldn’t remember a thing. Plus, there’s not enough time given to nourish the important skills mentioned above.
Most teachers also focus on the outcomes, rather than the process.
They require a lot of outputs — projects, homeworks, quizzes, presentations.
The children are overtested, but the truth is they’re underassessed.
I think it’s because they target content, rather than depth.
Also, the high amount of paper works to check and accomplish is so stressful for the teachers that it limits their energy to really know each kid.
Because of these, more and more students just go to school for their friends. They quit learning so early, because they are not taught how to learn. They are not guided towards knowing what their real interest is. Their potential is forever unknown.
There’s such a huge waste of potential and talent because of this poor educational system. I don’t even know why our country implemented K-12, even though no one is ready for it. We’re just prolonging the agony of the children.
In other countries, though, several teaching strategies are being used already to address this societal concern: inquiry-based learning, project-based learning, differentiated instruction, multiple intelligences, and more…
There are also some schools in the Philippines that are aware of these already.
However, we need more educators who are open-minded and willing to unlearn the old techniques and learn the best ones, even though it’s uncomfortable.
This is the only way to make more people thinkers again.
I hope to find more teachers who will join me and some of my friends to the revolution of educational reform. We need to produce generations that are not only job-ready, but armed with all the skills that they need to survive the complexities of this world.
P.S. Parents, if you’re reading this, please save your child from schools that will harm them for the rest of their lives. Besides, taking care of them is also taking care of yourself and the world we all live in. Let’s not teach them to make the same mistakes we did.
References:
Robinson, K. (2007). Do schools kill creativity?[Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY
Robinson, K. (2011). Out of our minds: Learning to be creative [E-reader version]. Chichester, UK: Capstone.
Azzam, A. (2009). Why creativity now? A conversation with Sir Ken Robinson. Educational Leadership, 67(1), 22–26. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept09/vol67/num01/Why-Creativity-Now¢-A-Conversation-with-Sir-Ken-Robinson.aspx
Professor Patrick Griffin and the team from the Assessment Research Centre, University of Melbourne in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on the Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills, hosted on Coursera.