Boa Constrictor or a Hat?
...I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether my drawing frightened them.
But they answered: “Frightened? Why should anyone be frightened by a hat?”
My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant...
The Little Prince
We regard things according to how we perceive them. If a person sees a picture of a hat, he does not feel afraid as one who sees a boa constrictor in the same picture. I am of the mind that it is the same with education. The potency of something cannot be maximized unless one sees it rightly. Our acceptance of it depends on how we see or perceive it. And education being a vehicle for social mobility, it is pertinent to ask where or what the destination is. Where exactly do we want education to take us? More importantly so, what is education for us?
The movie, 3 Idiots, posed excellence and success as two diverged paths, the former leads to accomplishment, the other to affluence. In my perspective, all four terms are relative and not necessarily opposing terms. What is excellence? What is success? How does one gauge both? What does it mean to be affluent and to be a person with accomplishments? Cannot one be excellent and also successful? Is success a lesser end? For me, these are all positive terms. In an alternative way of viewing it, the film-maker might mean that one must excel first in what he or she does and success will be inevitable. This is perhaps what he meant by “success will run after you with its pants down.” And that affluence is not the goal of all the ‘journeying.’ However, if one defines excellence and success differently, it can be said, too, that: One is successful when he or she has lived excellently. Excellence being synonymous to being able to go beyond mediocrity and doing things the best way a person can, sometimes even challenging the impossible and trailblazing a new path. One is affluent when he or she has a sense of fulfillment in himself knowing he has given everything he can; and therefore harbors no regret in old age—he has accomplished the goals he had set on himself and not being limited to what is largely believed as criteria to be considered accomplished.
Rancho toiled and was successful in Engineering because it is his passion. Learning for him was no work at all because he is focused on his education and not merely on his schooling. He did it because he loved it. It gave him a sense of fulfillment. And that for him is what’s essential.
In an encyclical by Pope John II, Labores Exercens, he mentioned that “work is made for man and not man for work.” Human beings have this intrinsic worth and dignity. They are made not to be as machines but to have meaningful lives. This goes parallel to the premise that education is made for man to improve his lot, not to enslave him and decide for him. It is a tool of emancipation, mobility, empowerment—a key to open doors and not the opposite—restricting and confining.
Future Directions
As a website puts it: The two-year senior high program promotes skills and competencies relevant to the job market as well as in-depth specialization depending on the occupation or career track you wish to pursue. It is my worry that since K-12 seeks to train students for the available job markets, it would make the move to a 12-year education cycle become a means to make education merely utilitarian—factories to provide the business sector with human machines. Here, Rolland Paulston’s Educational Stratification and Cultural Hegemony in Peru comes to mind. In the mentioned article, Paulston concluded that educational systems can be used to support the social hierarchies present in a certain society. Will the K-12 lure students to be contented with graduating senior high since this will already give them access to jobs? According to statistics, only 14 out of 100 students are able to finish college. Will this number decrease more because, a poor nation as we are, most people would like to be employed as early as possible to help the family? In our culture, education is treated as a legacy by parents to their children. The additional 2 years might be seen as a substitute for university education since there will be no more reason to pursue higher education because they can get a job anyway. Will this mean that people from the lower strata will compose the bulk of ‘worker ants’ doing blue-collar jobs. And because those from higher income brackets can afford the additional university years, ergo managerial and executive posts, will this mean that they will maintain the power within their ranks? With the K-12 looming over our heads, can we also look at it vis-à-vis what path we would like to direct our students? Can we also make sure to inculcate in them that they are not merely studying so they can get jobs but to enable them to discover their own personal passions and pursue it. I hope I am wrong. I am not against the addition of two more years in what used to be a 10-year system. I, in fact think that it will give us more time to hone our students. The question really is what to teach them.
According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, a human being’s needs can be pictured as a 5-step pyramid, the first step includes human being’s most basic necessities—food, water, shelter, clothing, air. The second: the need to feel secure and safe. Third: the need to feel loved and a part of a group. Fourth: self-esteem. And the last, the need for self-actualization; man’s search for what will give meaning to his life and the meaning of life itself.
Why do I have to mention this? Parents send their children to schools to be educated. Schooling, ideally, is a tool for persons to be educated. Education is different from schooling. What is education then? Allow me to put it as Rancho defined machines; Education is a tool, a journey even, that will enable man to find and give meaning to his life, to read through and learn from his experiences. Education must teach man how to think, how to see and to see clearly. It is beyond graduations, certificates, diplomas and medals. It is beyond having the necessary papers and proofs to go have the means to answer human’s physiological needs. Education is meant to show man how to live to his fullest potential.