My Unhurried Thoughts About The Academe
Pandemic Blog
Education is once again a subversive force.
“There is no such thing as neutral education. Education either functions as an instrument which is used to bring about conformity, or it becomes the ‘practice of freedom’ — the means by which we deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of the world.” — Paulo Freire
In the light of the pandemic, how can students manage their lives in the academe?
“We need to say NO to the neoliberal fatalism that we are witnessing at the end of this century, informed by the ethics of the market, an ethics in which a minority makes most profits against the lives of the majority. In other words, those who cannot compete, they die. “
EXORDIUM
I am a secondary education college student, who is into the expertise of swotting the teaching profession and will be into practice later next year. Venturing into this métier requires no facile beginnings, especially that my genesis from my freshman year wasn’t easy at all. The course on how institutions manage the modifications in serving education towards the students is somehow retard and experimental, needless to say, that we all go through in the plight of this pandemic.
One of the major changes assembled by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) — a governing body covering both public and private higher education institutions and degree-granting programs in all tertiary educational universities in the Philippines includes the revision of the face-to-face classes and teaching into a mode that’ll befit the current situation of the nation, of the world in general. Since digits of the active Covid-19 cases are truly escalating and of no means to be halted; even if we observe the precautionary measures, chances of controlled numbers are less likely to be possible. Hence, it is not only the Philippines that implemented the “temporary and dependent” type of alternative education universities adapt for this school year but numerous countries around the world.
Online classes are then implemented from the school year 2020–2021 in the context of college degrees and programs and even for the next school opening — the thing that is unclarified yet. The mode of learning drastically changed, from seeing your “supposed-to-be block mates” daydreaming of having the best college memories ever as freshmen to virtually having a toast for a successful and passed final exams. From being thrilled for having oral recitations to fretting at times because of the flopped internet connection when called for participation online. Things just went wildly different! Yet unfortunately, students are dying to hope for the situation to be back to normal — the thing that we know will never happen, extremely impossible! I just end up convincing myself then, that there will never be any “old normal” coming back to existence. Students should just be used to having online classes every day! I am honest. When I say online classes, expect that you’ll have your eyes focused on your laptop or mobile phones’ screen, all day! I am not even mentioning yet if students get and have absorbed the discussions of their educators (and the whole class) in this new type of teaching setup. I’ll leave this up to the readers who are as well students who experience the same story as mine; thus, this is a personal and subjective important add-on. But here’s the crucial matter to talk through: “What do these online classes ensue in the change of approach in the academe?” Is the academe still student-friendly?”
TAKE A LOOK:
LIFE IN THE ACADEME?
It was with great uncertainty from everyone in the society how the newly-implemented educational mode would work. There are no chalkboards anymore, but screens; no manual class records but Google Classrooms/Meet apps — highly technical. But what do these all imply? When I aforementioned “uncertainty,” I mean these:
- Parents from the middle and marginalized classes are disturbed by the qualification of gadgets and internet connections their children need to attend their school programs, although few of the college universities offer another type of mode of learning called “modular learning.” There are just college degrees in which this learning isn’t applicable, such that categories in medicine and engineering (but overall all — the other degrees as well).
- The students are adjusting, and in tremendous doubt, if they are truly learning — expected that we are venturing into a new educational strategy.
- Educators are as well struggling, left in deep questions if they have done the best of their parts in teaching.
- There is a polarity in teaching execution and students’ learning reception. Hence, there are two so-called formal learning modes right now: online and modular delivery; and both differ in approach and objectives. Both shouldn’t be compared but be considered as two various ways in learning in the plight of the pandemic, but;
- There’s this formation of inequality in the academe lately: the students who can afford these gadgets, laptops, and internet connections — to name a few, seem to be more convenient compared to those who didn’t have any apparatuses at all. Tough!
What really makes for a great institution of higher learning?
“Not the unrivaled prestige and reputation, if these are pursued and maintained at the cost of demoralization and alienation among the faculty and staff. We won’t go very far. Not an enviable complement of scholars and scientists, if intellectual talent is not imbued with a passion to serve the people. We will, sooner and not later become a liable to society. Not rigorous academic standards, if these very same standards lead to chronic elitism and contempt for what those in the margins have to say on their behalf. We will then be in league with their oppressors. Certainly, not state-of-the-art facilities if these become part of the reason why academics lose sight of the need to be socially relevant. We will be nothing more than an expensive adornment, a hollow edifice.”
In his work “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” Paulo Freire, define oppression as an act of exploitation, violence, and a failure “to recognize others as persons.” Not only do oppressors commit violence against the oppressed by keeping them from being fully human, they often stereotype oppressed people as “violent” for responding to oppression.
In this recent academe system among the higher education, if these laptops and internet connections can create stereotypes and inequality among the learning journey of the students, and if this system can harm them, I do not think — I couldn’t even start to imagine if it’s worth it! Is it worth it to prevail such transition and risk the lives of the students at the same time? I understand that we are all new to this, but whilst we are in the phase of uncertainty, are we capable of going through weak or do we need to pause first and peruse the next thing to do?
If this new educational system’s oppressive, I do not think we deserve to be lax. Hence, I assert we need to reimagine things in teaching, but an arduous task it is — for the system in the academe needs to completely see both macro and micro lenses to fully relate to one another’s sentiments and hardships throughout the whole course of education. For if the students badly see the academe as problematic as it is right now, I do not think this education can solve any other oppressions in the society and be as powerful as what Mandela had quoted, “Education is the most powerful thing…” because the educational system itself is the problem, how can it be a key to solve other problems? Does it not only multiply the problem? And if the academe itself is oppressive right now, how can it be a resolution to any other oppressions?
I often told my friends who weren’t able to enroll this year because of the dilemma in online classes, that “the education we have right now, is only another way of self-development — and isn’t like one’s whole life depends on it!” I intently mean it, for them to not be saddened by the fact of not being able to attend school because of the educational transition, and I as well so mean it, when I say that if the educational system right now can’t even reimagine things such as addressing this inequality and oppression inside the academe — I wouldn’t halt myself from concluding that I begin to lose hope in education as a powerful key in the society, but instead as a subversive force of oppression, nothing but an expensive adornment, a hollow edifice.”
