Tuesday, August 26, 2008

MisEdukating the Young Pinoy

After so many years of being disillusioned with the difficult, taxing study of law, I went back to my old love, teaching. After hurdling it(and still hurdling law school) I rest a bit to go back to my old self—a teacher.

How did I land to this job? A friend of mine, told me that she is leaving the university life and would go to an industrial setting and find another pot of gold somewhere there, so she told me if I am interested. So, plunging like somersault backwards, again.

Teaching College Freshmen and Sophomores is not easy. I thought teaching college students would be mentoring skillful beings—but I made a wrong an assumption. It is also not as easy as I think it would be. I thought that after finishing high school, they should have learned the rudiments of Grammar---but lo and behold, their grammar and pronunciation even knowledge of basic things are inept. So scarce, so in want that you wouldn’t believe you are teaching College freshmen.

Redeeeming it a bit, I am enjoying every hour I am with them. I enjoy every minute sharing what I have and seeing that they absorb like sponge, as if, they in desperate need to learn something.

There are several observations I have noticed with our younger Pinoy students:

1. They could hardly express themselves in English. Terrible grammar, rambling statements and poor vocabulary. Communicative competencies are poor and inadequate.
2. They are not independent readers. They cannot understand 100% what they have read. In my own assumption, they can only understand less than 50% of what they have perused.
3. They are bad spellers and could hardly pronounce some common English words like receipt, receive, accommodate and some others.
4. The critical thinking skills were not developed fully. The usually fail to integrate, evaluate and infer information or concepts.

Nah. Do not ever think that I am murdering the abilities of our students. I too, am a teacher who wants that their knowledge be of the level of that of their instructors. The miseducation and inability of our students are just poor reflection of what kind of quality of education we have, what kind of teaching materials available to us, and what competencies our teachers possess.

Observing it closely, look at the books and workbooks and textbooks published in other countries. They are heavily-laid with activities, contained with much information and printed with quality paper. Are we shortchanging everything because we use the usable raison d’etre—we are the a third world countr? What a sweet escape to a bitter reality.

Ready for the workplace?

Are the Filipino Youth ready for the workplace? I don’t think they are. Nada. No, not now, and I don’t think they can later…I am not putting down the egos and or putting off the fire in our young students, but the idea of rigid study and scholarship are characters that lack among the young Pinoy today.

At one time, after I entered the class a lady student approached me trying to submit her assignment she told me in Filipino “Sir late po…kasi nalimutan” (sir, it was late, because it was forgotten”. I told the student, that I will only accept the assignment only if she offers her explanation in English. She smirked and said, “No sir, never mind, absent na lang po…” I want to die laughing, but I felt pity. Pity that has not crept into my being since the time I was born. What will happen to these young students? What will be their future?

How will they enter employment without even learning the basics of sentence construction? How will they compose structurally and expressive sentences in letters and memorandas? I just wonder how they will enter their jobs without familiarizing themselves with the basic spelling, and acquainting with business’ vocabulary words.

These people whom I am now teaching will be facing the workforce later, joining the throngs of men who will be builders of business and economy, so the question is, will they be useful to the workplace? Will they be able to communicate? Will they be able to express themselves? Have they learned all the skills they suppose to know to compete and to work in the real world?

And now looking at our students, I just hope that they will soon realize that they should improve their skills and hone their talents, more than they realized, that it was just enough.

Miseducating is more difficult I suppose than just educating them---at this stage.





0 comments: