rst real job was as a high school and college teacher in a missionary school in Baybay, Leyte. And my last full-time job was again as a teacher in a graduate school of business. The teaching, or really, learning methodologies were very dirst job, there was a lot of administrative work. Preparing lesson plans, designing tests, checking and scoring tests, recording grades.
Our poor performance in international evaluation of learners’ skills in reading, writing, and mathematics may be caused by our students’ inability to think independently and by their learning confusion in a language foreign to them. We should just be realistic and teach English as a second or language. Linguists classify Cebuano and Tagalog as languages, not dialects. Nevertheless, while they communicate better in their mother tongue, English happens to be de facto the international language.
The objectives for education are to educe and enhance knowledge, skills, and orientations. It seems to me there is too much emphasis on the knowledge aspect and less on the skills of independent thinking, judging, and decision-making. In this age of rapid progress in technology and information dissemination, knowledge is constantly evolving. AI is increasingly taking over much of the thinking and doing.
I propose using the AIM system of having just four options for student performance evaluation: Pass, Fail, Distinction, and High Distinction. Passing quizzes and tests tends to require good memories and playback of teachers’ inputs rather than sharp and independent thinking.