Essentials versus peripherals: Our experience in basic education

(Second of two parts)

After setting up targets and clarifying standards, we devised strategies and procedures to accomplish our mission in the quickest time, with minimal change in physical and organizational infrastructure, despite inferior resources. These strategies are enveloped in the CVIF DLP, a program mixing traditional methods, individual instruction, distance learning, the Montessori philosophy, and reviving classical approaches such as the no-homework policy. The components of the program are Parallel Classes, Activity-based Multi-domain Learning, In-school Comprehensive Student Portfolios (instead of notebooks), Comprehensive Teachers Portfolio (instead of Lesson Plan Notebooks), Strategic Study and Rest Periods, and Integrated Cultural and Values Formation. (Synchronized classes allow a scenario of "Learning as One Nation" with lectures of a national expert teacher aired live on TV to benefit more students. This would bypass the country’s perennial lack of qualified science teachers. The project is being considered for piloting. On Jan. 16, 2006, the Fund for Assistance to Private Education hosted a meeting of the directors and staff of the Department of Science and Technology-Science Education Institute, the Philippine Science Centrum, and the presidents of the Center for Educational Measurement, the Samahang Pisika ng Pilipinas, and the CVIF, to brainstorm implementation schemes for the project.)

We implemented the CVIF DLP with the Basic Education Curriculum in 2002 and then started the slow deliberate scientific process of continuing improvement and decreasing margins of error (though not precluding quantum jumps with resonance of insights). Focus on targets made us resilient to the misgivings expressed by those who found our methods slow and strange. We knew that before positive results of a major enterprise can be enjoyed, a slowdown may first occur. After the dip, a slow rise begins, and then exponential progression can be anticipated. By 2003, 2004 and 2005, out of about a dozen students who took the University of the Philippines (UP) College Admission Test annually, four, five, and six students passed, respectively, after eight consecutive years without any passers. (UP’s reasonable fee for quality education is helpful for our students who are mostly children of farmers, fishermen, laborers, and tricycle drivers, among others.) Students now do better in our open-ended evaluation activities. However, we are still far from our target number of graduates admitted to good colleges and universities, and who do not find difficulty in college math and science courses. Our other targets (within five to seven years) include competitive performance in international scholastic aptitude tests, and internationally publishable research work of teachers and advanced students. From low baselines in 1999, we are slowly approaching normal conditions for this school year (SY). Starting SY 2006-2007, we shall move more aggressively toward our long-range goals.

Academic performance is not enough. We desire the development of the whole person. Scientific culture is not bred in isolation but catalyzed even as we inculcate civic culture. For example, rules on punctuality in our school demand synchronization of clocks with international time checks. Synchronization demands the availability of quality clocks, thus increasing sensitivity to precision and accuracy – valued by scientists. This has also taught the discipline of timekeeping and the value of a single minute. For a meeting scheduled at 3:45 to 4:45 p.m., teachers generally come two minutes before, assured that the meeting starts at exactly 3:45 p.m. and will end at 4:45 p.m. Following the example, student council officers schedule and start meetings on time.

In teaching math and science, we underscore the stringent rules of logic and the discipline of the scientific method. This value integration seems to have diminished the propensity for gossip, hearsay and unchecked opinions. There is also better appreciation of rules and laws of the community and the nation at large as important for order, progress, and the development of all members of the community.

Echoing the Socratic Method, we have also evolved a more scholarly school culture counter to the more materialistic popular culture. (While respecting "parallel cultures," we note that some cultures foster excellence and progress while others foster squalor, poverty and mediocrity. Note also that there are athletes who are intellectual, and university professors who are not.) In our most recent three-act play, "St. Thomas More," Sir More is portrayed as a loving and dedicated family man who had his daughters educated in a time when women were relegated to less intellectual ventures. One scene has Sir More’s children discussing theories of the earth and the solar system (an opportunity to recap lessons on Copernicus, Kepler, Columbus, and Magellan). Also, the Machiavellian tendencies of King Henry VIII and his advisers were contrasted with the selflessness of Sir More in his perception of the hierarchy of family, king, country, and God. In such plays, our students are exposed to real dilemmas faced by great men and their choices which determined their role in history.

The excitement and challenge of educating our students continue to propel us in our work. We do not deny that there are many difficult moments when our fortitude, stamina, patience and perseverance are sorely tested. However, these are nothing compared to the many moments of profound joy and reverence as we observe our students in the throes of purest creativity and exploration of truths invisible to the physical eye. Moreover, it was when we immersed ourselves fully in the school that we began to see answers to many questions. Why do many children, all the way up to adulthood, fear or hate math and physics? Are there ways of making these subjects enjoyable even while being rigorously mathematical and not just conceptual? How do we transcend linguistic and cultural barriers to uncover universal truths? What would drive our nation to genuine progress and development? (For us, genuine development is not the high-rise condominiums, computers, fancy cars and high-tech gadgets. These are but peripherals. True development means that the people of a nation have achieved high levels of civilization – they are honest, industrious, dutiful, and can maintain clean, peaceful, productive towns and cities in all parts of the country.) We do not have all the answers yet but, clearly, education of the youth remains a fruitful source of insights.

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M. Victoria Carpio-Bernido and Christopher Bernido obtained their PhDs in Theoretical Physics from the State University of New York at Albany (SUNYA) and are founding senior researchers at the Research Center for Theoretical Physics, Central Visayas Institute (CVI), Jagna, Bohol. Marivic is the principal of CVI, and Chris is the president of the CVI Foundation. Prior to their current affiliations, they were faculty members at the National Institute of Physics, UP Diliman. E-mail them at [email protected].