Second reading

HOW many times should one reread?

When I was a young student, I blamed my teacher when I could not understand an essay after the first reading. Why did she choose something so difficult?

Now that I am older and still a student, I know better than to blame the teacher. I blame the writer: why did this fellow have to make his point only after 600 pages?

Historian Chen Shou of the Jin Dynasty had a retort for that: “When a book is read a hundred times, all its meaning naturally becomes clear.”

I find no fault in his logic except that during his lifetime (233-297 A.D.), he didn’t have to deal with a Gmail inbox left unchecked for a day.

But even to this logic, the Republican Party has a rejoinder. They are going over 55,000 pages of emails that Hillary Clinton sent when she was U.S. secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.

The person most likely to become the next U.S. president is under fire for using a personal email account when she headed the State Department from 2009 to 2013.

The Republicans say they want to study how Clinton handled the September 2012 attacks in Libya. The real intent is to find fault.

Malice does not always guide rereading. Last May 19, Alvin Yapan posted on Facebook a photo of the Grade 10 textbook, “Filipino: Panitikang Pandaigdig,” whose table of contents described the Harry Potter series as a “novel from the United States”.

Again on Facebook, Joseph Salazar posted about the same book, which cited the Epic of Gilgamesh as a “literary work from Egypt”.

Most 16-year-olds know British writer J. K. Rowling, creator of Harry. Few Filipino teenagers and their parents know the Epic of Gilgamesh. I didn’t.

Thanks to the vigilance of Yapan and Salazar, who are assistant professors at the Ateneo de Manila University, I verified online that the Epic of Gilgamesh is a poem of ancient Mesopotamia. In modern times, Mesopotamia covers a region that includes Iraq, as well as parts of Syria and Turkey.

Education Secretary Armin Luistro has admitted the “editorial lapses”. He said the Department of Education remains “open” to “valuable” feedback from stakeholders.

But this latest textbook error casts another shadow on the K to 12 program. How can we overhaul the educational system when slipshod scholarship bedevils the very nuts and bolts holding up the structure?

For better or worse, textbooks shape not just memories but attitudes, which harden into bias.
For years, I blamed “kaingeros” for their practice of burning a forest to clear space for farming. The notoriety stuck after more than a decade of textbooks and teachers repeating kaingin’s list of ecological crimes: deforestation, soil erosion, flooding.

As a community worker covering the virgin forests in Negros Oriental (barely) and southern Cebu (none) during the 1980s, I saw other ghouls devouring our forests: illegal loggers, furniture and fashion accessory exporters, and the small- and big-time leeches that grew fat on bribes when trees were cut and transported without permits.

Recently, researchers from Melbourne and Copenhagen reported at the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture that swidden agriculture or kaingin offers climate-change benefits, aside from giving residents a livelihood that does not disrupt ecology.

Will scholars finally correct the injustice to kaingeros? It’s time to reread.


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)


*First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s May 31, 2015 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”

Swapping teachers

CAN a college lecturer switch to high school?

That’s a possibility facing hundreds of college teachers when senior high school begins in 2016. The implementation of the K to 12 enhanced basic education curriculum will keep junior high school students from graduating and entering college.

From 2016 to 2017, the first batch of senior high school students will still be in grades 11 and 12. Given the expected drop in college enrolment starting 2016, teachers in higher education institutions and technical-vocational institutions are prioritized by law for hiring in secondary schools.

Under Republic Act (RA) 7836 implemented in 1994, those qualified to teach in elementary and high school are only education graduates who passed the Licensure Examination for Teachers (LET).

The creation of the additional two years of senior high school imposes a higher demand for LET passers. To enable high schools to have their needed teachers, there is a relaxation of the RA 7836 rule. Non-LET passers are required to pass the LET within five years after their hiring so they can continue to teach full-time.

These are the transitions envisioned for 2016, reported the Philippine Daily Inquirer last Feb. 3, 2013.

Seen in this light, the shifting around of teachers seems as elementary as changing classrooms. Upon reexamination, though, things don’t seem to be as simple.

To be qualified for the primary grades, a generalist education degree is needed. To teach high school, the degree must be specific to the subject one is teaching.

In addition, there are two different approaches to teaching. Pedagogy is child-centered while andragogy is focused on the adult learner.

Given the complexity of molding young minds, pedagogy is also focused on teaching the teachers. It lays down the techniques for mentoring even as it structures the content comprising the foundation of learning.

Many of those who instruct college undergraduates are not even required to have a formal background in andragogy. The basic requirement to teach in college is an academic and professional background, preferably specialization, in the area one is teaching.

What will happen when a college instructor handles high school students? Can a teacher used to working with adults be effective in connecting with and motivating children, preteens and teens, the last categorized as young adults in theory but infinitely more complex in reality?

One who has been preparing undergraduates to join the job market brings some advantages in senior high school. Under the K to 12 system, senior high school students are supposed to have the skill sets that will get them hired if they don’t choose to proceed to college after graduation.

When I was studying and then teaching in college, a common complaint was the number of General Education subjects required before an undergraduate could proceed to the majors that taught specific theories and skills needed to get a job.

For many students and the families that depend on them, a college degree is one’s insurance to security. The Arts, Sciences and Humanities viewed by educators as essential for providing a well-rounded send-off to a life of learning that should continue after graduation are viewed as a burden and added expense by those who see education only as a prerequisite for work.

Can a college instructor bridge the expectations of humanizing and retooling middle school students? They should.

This requires changing the teaching mindset, a maneuver more intricate than switching classrooms. Teaching high school, a college instructor needs to acquire pedagogical and andragogical tools. In the junior high school years, pedagogy may still be relevant since the students are young enough to be guided by their teacher.

However, teacher-directed instruction will have less relevance in senior high school. The students will start flexing their independence and along with it, the desire to direct what they learn and the way to handle their problems and challenges.

If a teacher commits to accompanying the intellectual and personal journey of his or her students, he or she must see teaching as being more than a job between jobs. Many college instructors are part-timers. Some await the results of licensure exams or a better job offer. Others fit in teaching as a second or third means to pay bills.

For the K to 12 scheme to work, schools need to recruit more than LET passers or instructors for retooling. People with a vocation are prerequisites for 2016.


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)



*First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s June 22, 2014 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column