Where Did We Go Wrong With Teaching Kids In School?

Is it the way we’re teaching our kids that went wrong or a whole lot of other things?

Teaching kids isn’t easy, admittedly. Especially if it’s a subject that demands practice and process, commanding the kid’s attention, making sure they understand what we’re saying, and making sure it’s followed up at home is no easy task. But that’s only within the confines of the classroom. Most schools often have teachers handling administrative tasks too, leaving them burned out.

But the student’s lag in the Philippines isn’t just the teacher’s fault. It’s a whole systemic issue!

The Lag of Students in the Philippines

Unfortunately, according to the OECD, the results of Philippine students in the 2022 rankings of the Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA) disappoint with many kids still falling short in Math, Reading, and Science. In 2021, the Philippines scored the lowest in reading comprehension and the second lowest in math and science across all countries. However, this does not mean there isn’t a minority that does well. Those who do are called outliers or the snowflakes — they’re the ones who differ vastly from the average.

But this doesn’t mean we didn’t improve. Although minimal, it’s still worth noting that we did improve in Math, increasing to 16%. But the average is still 69% which means there’s still a lot of work to be done!

School Work: Frustrating Families and Schools Alike

School work has always been frustrating in both levels of difficulty and the amount given. Some universities created a magna carta for students wherein, university students can plea-bargain for the postponement of an exam if at least 65% of the class already has 2 exams with the upcoming one being the third one for that day. Other schools, because of the strict timeline wherein certain competencies must be mastered at the end of the year, resort back to the traditional rote memorization: they can repeat word for word but they don’t understand a thing they said. They take the lesson “as is, where is.”

But the PISA results also showed that other factors prevented kids from learning. Some were the safety of going to school; with pathways degrading over time from wear and tear, kids who walk to school or commute may find themselves fearing more for their lives. They then become more conditioned, associating death with going to school which makes them resist learning. Bullying is also another context; 43% among girls reported a case of bullying while boys had it at 53%. However, it is important to note that the method of bullying has also advanced. From what was just shouting and spreading rumors in real life, it now has a more cyber element due to Globalization.

The Effects of Globalization on Education

Globalization — which National Geographic defines as “how trade and technology have connected families all across the world” — has sped up, most especially due to the internet. With information available at the touch of a button, families have more control over what and how they want to learn. Social media, a product of Globalization, has both simplified and complicated the situation even further; fact-checking has become an essential skill because now learning has a more human element in it: subjectivity (based on beliefs and world views) and perception (how our bodily senses receive and process the information) (Goodwin, 2020).

But Globalization’s effects on education do have its pros and cons when teaching kids (Jarvis, 2007; Spring, 2008; Abdurakhmonova, ugliMirzayev, Karimov, and Karimova, 2021). Sometimes, it forces psychologists and educational practitioners to adopt commercialization — the practice of using pop culture to teach lessons which is extra effort on their part because now they have to think in the context of the show (Indira, Hermanto, and Pramono, 2020; Petiot, Visoli, and Kermarrec, 2023). On the other hand, it provides them extra materials on how to creatively present the lesson so it actually sticks!

Is there a way to help our kids catch up with the rest of the world?

There are various ways but it’s a challenge to us parents too because it may mean going back to school for us! We thought we were done with all the submissions, papers, and exams but that’s not the case! Because some lessons are more intricate, we often hire what we call a shadow teacher — during the class, they coach the kids off-screen with the correct answers. While it creates good grades on paper, it doesn’t assure that our kids learned something!

Then, there’s artificial intelligence (AI). Many schools and parents are on the fence because of how it seemingly does the work for them (Chen, Chen, and Lin, 2020). But from an online teacher who’s tech-literate, there are ways to tell if someone else or an AI does the essay or research paper. From the choice of words, the flow, and even sometimes the outdated information, artificial intelligence only gets the job 50% done. It still needs a human element which it will never have: the novelty of experience and emotions.

But what we can do is show that learning is not just within the classroom. Our experience with homeschooling during the pandemic perhaps taught us that. Not all of us have a laboratory set-up but we have a kitchen which is the lifestyle version of one. We don’t have libraries but we have Google Scholar and Sci-Hub at our fingertips if we need proper reference material.

Want to practice Math? Video games have multipliers and equations that make the kids think; those numbers don’t just randomly pop out of nowhere! Besides that, online shopping is a good teaching ground for shopaholics and fashion-driven individuals.

Teaching Kids Requires Everyone To Work Together

Education, we have often said, is a lifelong experience which means also accepting that there are days that the student will overtake the teacher and that not everything can be taught in a classroom. Although grades are important because they reflect a certain part of their character, they shouldn’t be the one deciding factor whether they should go to college or not. Standardized tests are made by people, who in turn don’t know everything especially certain cultural nuances. But the most important part as we begin teaching our kids, however, is to be mindful and recognize these lessons in math, reading, and science as a foundation for all things in society wherein everything is connected.

Reference

Abdurakhmonova, M. M., ugliMirzayev, M. A., Karimov, U. U., & Karimova, G. Y. (2021). Information Culture And Ethical Education In The Globalization Century. The American Journal of Social Science and Education Innovations, 3(03), 384-388.

Chen, L., Chen, P., & Lin, Z. (2020). Artificial intelligence in education: A review. Ieee Access, 8, 75264-75278.

Goodwin, A. L. (2020). Globalization, global mindsets and teacher education. Action in Teacher Education, 42(1), 6-18.

Indira, E. W. M., Hermanto, A., & Pramono, S. E. (2020, June). Improvement of teacher competence in the industrial revolution era 4.0. In International conference on science and education and technology (ISET 2019) (pp. 350-352). Atlantis Press.

Jarvis, P. (2007). Globalization, lifelong learning and the learning society: Sociological perspectives. Routledge.

Petiot, O., Visioli, J., & Kermarrec, G. (2023). The emotional labor of physical education teachers in ‘difficult contexts’: an inductive analysis of the most significant moments of their career. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 1-16.

Spring, J. (2008). Research on globalization and education. Review of educational research, 78(2), 330-363.

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