Personally, I do not know Fr Benigno P Beltran, SVD, but thank you, Father, for your Facebook post, about the fires of learning, for teaching this teacher!
A very wide reader, BS Agriculture graduate major in Ag Education, UP ‘65, I never realized until now that PH colleges and universities do not light up fires of learning (upper image), but instead have been operating like factories and producing straight, docile people (lower image).
In my view, the tongues of fire symbolize creative thinking while the meek graduates symbolize having passed through the factory of critical thinking. All PH schools are like that.
Our educators have failed! Not only in the Philippines but worldwide. We copied the US factory educational system!
PH Secretary of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie has announced that the Department of Agriculture, DA, through its agency the Agricultural Credit Policy Council, ACPC, is offering an initial P2 Billion “that young students and entrepreneurs can borrow (from) to start any agriculture, fishery or agribusiness venture” (Facebook post). Manong Willie says, speaking as the ex-officio Chair of the ACPC:
We have to replace aging farmers with younger blood – our Pinoy millennials – who are the future of Philippine agriculture.
Based on Fr Beltran’s sharing above, on minds spewing out tongues of wild fires, today I recommend that the SCUs be re-educated to teach creative thinking, which they have not imagined, and not simply critical thinking, which they are doing now and are too good at!
Seniors, adults or millennials, we all have to think both critically and creatively. Critical thinking is hierarchical, sequential, chronological like that; creative thinking is always a leap of faith, but it is necessary.
For instance for rice, I point to the System of Rice Intensification, SRI, created by a non–farmer priest, Fr Henri de Laulanie when he was assigned in Madagascar[1].
The SRI techniques in sowing, transplanting and caring for the rice plants are based on critical thinking – they follow the science of crop growth. But the whole package of SRI was in the beginning only a creative thought, a leap of faith of this Jesuit, as Madagascar is one of the least developed countries in the world[2]– what could a laggard country contribute to modern agriculture?
Ah but, from what I know, SRI has been proven to be not only technically feasible, economically viable, environmentally sound, and socially acceptable. I have myself written about it; try my 28 April 2019 essay, “Since Male Farmers Are Hardheaded, Let's Cultivate The Female[3]!”
For youth entrepreneurs for the new PH Agriculture, I am thinking of the State Colleges & Universities, SCUs, scattered all over the country revising their curriculums to additionally teach the fires of learning – same subjects but more creative thinking and less critical thinking designed in. Like 90% creativity and 10% criticality, especially for young students who want to become entrepreneurs. With additional funding from the DA.
I am already volunteering to be part of the SCUs’ journey of creativity!@517
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_de_Laulanie
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar
[3]https://iparadigmshifts.blogspot.com/2019/04/since-male-farmers-are-hardheaded-let.html
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