Interdisciplinarity

One of the problems about talking about “General Education” is that the term does not mean the same thing around the world.

In most European countries, the term refers to what we call “basic education,” namely, elementary or primary school and high or secondary school. To make things confusing, the terms “high school” and “secondary school” are themselves defined in various ways.

In the United States, the term refers to the first year of what we call “tertiary education” or “undergraduate education.” To make things even more confusing, those taking master’s degrees are called “undergraduates” in Sweden.

In the United Kingdom, there is a law (coming into full effect in 2015) that defines what we call basic education. Until they are 18, all British children are forced to take the following courses before they go into a university: “English (Welsh is also a core subject in Welsh-speaking schools), mathematics, science, design and technology, information and communication technology, history, geography, modern foreign languages, music, art and design, physical education, and citizenship. In addition to these core subjects are a number of other compulsory courses, such as religious education” (list provided by the British Council).

Because European and British students take what we call GE courses before they get to a university, they need only three years of college to earn the equivalent of our bachelor’s degree. In fact, courses like medicine and law take only five years to complete after high school. (After K+12 and the new GE curriculum are safely installed, I shall start advocating lessening the number of years to earn an MD or an LlB. UP has already started a shorter MD course. Law schools might want to start thinking along the same lines. I clearly have a lot of battles left to keep this column going for a long time!)

As far as I know, the Philippines is the only country in the world that requires two years of general education after high school. This was one of the reasons the Arroyo administration wanted to call the first two years of college as “pre-university” or “pre-baccalaureate.” Why we have two years rather than one year (as in the American system) or no years at all (as in the European system) is probably due to the perception (often unfounded) of Filipino college teachers that Filipino high school teachers do not know how to teach.

Before revising the General Education Curriculum (GEC) as it now stands, we have to go back to the concept or philosophy behind education. What, exactly, is the purpose of education? Is it merely to keep children occupied until they are old enough to vote, go to war, get married, get a job, establish a company (not always in that order)? Is it to ensure that children get the skills to be employed so capitalists or government officials can keep corporations and agencies going? Is it to brainwash children so they do not stage revolutions against the government? Is it to make sure that they can get to heaven when they die? Or is it merely to make them go through what we (teachers and parents) went through to get to where we are today?

We have to be very clear in our minds why we are educating our children. This is the main reason the CHED Technical Panel on General Education (TPGE) decided to revisit the rationale of GE in college.

What was – is – the rationale for general education?

CHED Memorandum Order 59, series of 1996, puts it in one sentence: “The implementation of the new GEC must be characterized by an interdisciplinary approach which would help the students see the human being as an integral person living in both a national and a global community.”

The sentence is full of key words – interdisciplinary, human, integral, person, national, global, community. Each of these key words requires a book, but let me try to explain each of them by citing examples.

Let me use as an example the case of a person going to see a doctor. (I see a lot of doctors these days, because my body is frantically trying to keep up with my advocacies.)

A doctor who only looks at the medical chart and laboratory results of a patient cannot cure that patient. Harvard Medical School professor Jerome Groopman, who calls medicine “a mix of science and soul,” ends his book entitled How Doctors Think (2007) by recalling how he learned from a novelist how to treat cancer patients.

We have an example closer to home. Top international oncologist Dr. Romy Diaz, who treats the very rich and the very poor, has his cancer patients in Makati singing happily using a videoke while having chemotherapy.

That is interdisciplinarity in action. (To be continued)

TEACHING TIP OF THE WEEK. From the Centre for Learning and Teaching of Manchester Metropolitan University comes this tip: Do not use the deficit model (what students do not know) but the non-deficit model (what students already know) of education. Too many Filipino teachers complain that students do not know how to do this and how to do that, instead of building on what students can already do. Education is not a plumbing job (plugging holes), but an artistic creation (molding what is into what can be).