True Education
On Tuesday, my daughter and other grade school students will once again be off to school but I regard the day with more dread than anticipation. Things have changed considerably since my own elementary days and I’m afraid that most of the change has not been for the better.
Whether I suffer from selective amnesia or a faulty memory is still to be debated. But what I remember is that in my time, school and learning used to be much fun. In fact, we eagerly awaited the start of each school year because it always held the promise of wonderful things to come. Throughout the school year, we spent much time buried in schoolwork. But the pace was relaxed, the load, reasonable. Always, we had ample time for the things that fed our spirits: songs and dances, plays and parades, treks and campfires, and the camaraderie born out of long hours of play. We made up games that tested our memory, improved our vocabularies, widened our perspective, and deepened our knowledge. Yet we did everything in the spirit of fun and friendly competition. We spent sleepless nights burning the midnight candle reading our Nancy Drews and Hardy Boys and churned out book reviews with little prodding. We scanned the night sky for our favorite stars and planets, doing so with such wonder and ease. And while our homework was challenging, we managed to do them on our own and with little help from the adults who merely acted as our guides. Tutors were rare and learning centers were unheard of. At the end of each year, we stood proud knowing that we had grown a little more and that we possessed greater faith and confidence both in ourselves and in Life.
Yes, learning was a delight back then. In contrast, present-day education appears to have robbed our children of their childhood and the joy of learning. Children are frazzled and every day, it is a Herculean task just to get them awake and ready for school. The emphasis on academic excellence is simply excessive. So is the need to compete, to win, to succeed, to be globally competitive, and to be world-class. Because of this, children are saddled not only by the armloads of books they lug to class daily but far more by their deep-seated insecurities. Children also stagger from the weight of the information that is crammed into their young minds. Often, the information is either repetitive or way too much for their grade level leaving the children bored and uninterested. When this happens, they simply tune out making it even more difficult for them to process and grasp the material they’re expected to cover. This in turn leads to more feelings of frustration, helplessness and inadequacy.
Children also appear to tire easily. Many get sick often. The number of students in each class has increased and the ventilation is not enough to keep the children comfortable all the time. Resistance drops, not only resulting from the long hours spent cooped up in classrooms lacking adequate ventilation but also from the stress of the schoolwork and homework combined. Sometimes assignments and projects are beyond what they can comfortably handle that adults have to pitch in and help. Worse, at other times, the assigned task is unreasonably heavy or complicated that adults are compelled to do the tasks themselves if only to get everything done and done on time. The pressure and expectations intensify prompting many parents to hire tutors to help their children cope. Parents who decide to do without tutors take on that responsibility, spending much of their time after work doing little else. With both parents and children under so much stress, study periods can easily turn into a tug of war, a shouting match, a battle of wills as parents lose their cool over the children’s difficulty or inability to absorb the assigned material. So much for quality time and bonding.
Paradoxically, children also appear to be both attached to and detached from people. On one hand, their helplessness and dependence make them cling to their parents and care givers more. On the other, the limited time they are allowed to interact socially with classmates and friends has left them emotionally isolated as they lock themselves in the world of anime, cartoons and fantasy. Game boys, play stations, nintendos, cellphones and the latest and most advanced gizmos hold them hostage and exert undeniable but not necessarily the right influence on their values.
The sad plight of our children today begs us to honestly and seriously reconsider the state of basic education. Obviously, something about the entire picture leaves us with many troubling questions. What are we actually teaching our children? Must our children really be academically excellent, globally competitive and world-class? I ask these questions because as I look back on my time, I see that it wasn’t how perfectly we spelled our words or crossed our t’s and memorized our multiplication tables that have made us who we are now or determined the difference between our success and failure. Rather, the lessons that had lasting impressions on us and shaped us the most were those that tested our spirits and not just our minds. What also stand out are moments when our teachers’ compassion, generosity, discipline, and patience instilled the same values in us.
Considering all these, if we take what worked in the past and use them now, and if we do away with contemporary methods that are not to our children’s best interests and keep only those that are, perhaps we can look to the start of another school year with renewed hope. If we can temper the emphasis on academic excellence by adding a greater accent on the excellence of the heart and spirit, then maybe we need not worry too much about our children absorbing the wrong values. And, if we can teach our children how to think for themselves and what are truly essential in life rather than dictate to them what they should absorb, then maybe we can reclaim the children we have lost to globalization and technological development. We will have with us again children who are not necessarily world-class but ones who are happy, hopeful, well-grounded, and who have a heart for service. But unless we alter their fate by addressing the state of basic education today, that dream won’t come true. And our children may never be the Hope of the Fatherland that we wish them to be.
The choice is ours…
Their future rests in our hands.