Is it good to teach if children are naughty and undisciplined? Yes to teaching them, and yes to correcting them.
Part of classroom management is controlling the disorder and reprimanding children; mind you, not all of them have to be reprimanded. Speaking of gulo (disorder, trouble), will there be no more gulo when you leave the classroom? This is where teaching comes in – let us look at it holistically, not professionally for a moment – by all the elders for the children to be taught. Those reaching the ages of 25 and over, especially 35, 45, 55, and 65, play a big role in correcting the wrong habits of children. We cannot wait for the teachers alone to make the crucial corrections to them.
That segued into our greetings to all: Happy Teacher’s Day!
Beyond the limits of outside classroom comprehension, we would ultimately lead us to believe that the traditional classrooms can only do so much educating people. Kargo rin ng pagtuturo (teaching) ang mga pahataw-hataw sa kanto, persons deprived of liberty (PDLs), at ang mga tumatagal sa lungsod pero matatagal na ring jaywalkers.
Actual learning occurs when we sit down with them, with our peers, with our leaders, and communicate (transfer thoughts) and work on empathy-related processes. There is actual learning in gaining a deep understanding of their situations and the way they understand their situations. No less than the Department of Education – forget about the left-right spectrum – is also a source of trouble. Magturuan tayo, magpaturo tayo. Even to the uneducated. Even to the poorest of poor communities. We do not know their everyday accomplishments, but they are there. There is ethnomethodology in that. To overlook the practical accomplishments of their daily lives is to miss the opportunity in sense-making and, therefore, miss giving them what truly basic social services they need. If experience is the “best” teacher, we must acknowledge the fact that the wild and wide experience of the poor will teach us best only if we listen to and spend time with them. And since they are the best, we must not always relegate them to mere participants in our studies. Recruitment of the best participants will be our badge of honor because they suffer a lot, which means they are the best teachers to us.
Thinking of ways to honor them back? Help them celebrate their lives, especially the lives of their children, and improve our teaching, with all of us teaching.
DC Alviar
Professor DC Alviar serves as a member of the steering committee of the Philippine International Studies Organization (PHISO). He was part of National University’s community extension project that imparted the five disciplines of a learning organization (Senge, 1990) to communities in a local government unit. He writes and edits local reports for Mega Scene. He graduated with a master’s degree in development communication from the University of the Philippines Open University in Los Baños. He recently defended a dissertation proposal for his doctorate degree in communication at the same graduate school under a Philippine government scholarship grant. He was editor-in-chief of his high school paper Ang Ugat and the Adamson News.
