If you are a mentor, teacher, instructor, or tutor in any subject, science or specialty, and you are using textual, visual or video materials, chances are you are unaware that you are not educating people at all – you are either entertaining them when you should not, or you are throwing bits & pieces of knowledge into the brains that you think are bottomless!
Today, Saturday, 12 December 2020, a Facebook post tells me “Remote Learning Isn’t Working[1]” (ANN, Patriotpost.us). ANN says:
Earlier this year, fears over the coronavirus shuttered classrooms across the country as school systems opted for makeshift online learning. At the time, the stopgap measure seemed like the only way to keep our kids both safe and engaged with their schooling.
That’s the US – but it’s true for the Philippines too. So, teachers and students have been forced to teach and learn in front of computers. How good has the learning been? The discovery: “Months later… the evidence now shows many children are failing their online classes.” Actually, the adults are failing too.
ANN says, “Remote education may be fine for some adults, but most kids need to be in schools with their teachers and classmates.” That is, back to the teacher’s direct control: “Do this, do that.” Whether in grade school, high school, or college: Teaching/learning in the classroom is essentially memory work. And that is what teachers are insisting even in online education.
What all teachers need to do is teach how to think.
What all learners need to do is learn how to think!
Since I studied to be a teacher in agriculture, UP Los Baños '65, I’m thinking of the state colleges & universities, SCUs, and how they are teaching their students agriculture. And of course teachers are teaching students like they had been taught:
Class, your assignment on Wednesday is the composition of the soil. We will discuss the details. And – be ready for a quick quiz.
On Wednesday, the class will recite on the nutrients that crops absorb from the soil for growth, and why at a certain point in time, there is a need for some fertilizer to be applied. The professor talks about a total of 16 essential nutrients that plants need in order to grow well. But he does not explain why there are only a few kinds of commercial fertilizers available: such as supplying only nitrogen, only phosphorus, only potassium, and all of those 3, NPK, called “complete fertilizer.”
Think about it. The lesson does not include how the soil has naturally built up its own composition, and how the nutrients found in it are replenished naturally – or how the farmer may induce the natural replenishment of the richness of that soil. Via “natural farming,” say.
SCUs, think about it. Teaching is teaching how to think!@517
[1]https://patriotpost.us/articles/76389-remote-learning-isnt-working-2020-12-11?fbclid=IwAR2u4CDLgQQ3vNyNGiUrjPB1QnLDpcSZstKN7CP_ziMp4TOjbtFp7JlK2rg
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