MAP Insights

2nd of 2 Parts

Miseducation: cross-generation LLL emergencies         

The various miseducation crises of the Philippines published in EDCOM II’s first two year reports are forms of social cancer that spread insidiously across the body politic in different people, places and time. They must be viewed in the broad sense of emergencies increasing with risk and decreasing with sense of urgencies – to better understand different interventions on the way people or groups react to crises.

Structured internships (SI) and lifelong learning (LLL) legislation can be designed to lower risks and heighten the sense of urgencies in the many aspects of the failed systems behind Philippine miseducation.

Various generations of learners (Baby boomers, Gens X, Y, Z, Alphans) differ greatly in their sense of urgencies, but it is the older professionals and more experienced skilled workers who can reduce risks.

There is a technical sense of urgency affecting all generations: the reaction time to an adverse event announcement compared to the estimated intervention time for bad outcomes to occur (three time points), e.g., AI displacing aspects of human work at first, and, later, wholesale replacement of entire skilled work and professions, etc.  These may be seen differently by younger job-ready SHS (Senior High School) vs. older college students who also take TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training) courses.

Need for balance through LLL

EDCOM II’s foundational focus on basic education for the future-ready workforce must thus be balanced by LLL for the older ones, even with enterprise-based training in need for more soft and hard skills.

They can be supplemented further with corporate university-type teaching and learning, e.g., the IBM set-up at Asia Pacific College with SM Foundation, as noted in Part I. Corporate universities lower the transaction costs across several layers of course preparation unique to the needs of companies, especially the timeliness factors in managerial interventions.

Unfortunately, LLL is the weakest of the reform areas in EDCOM II as EDCOM II Co-Chair, Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, averred in a Philippine Business for Education (PBEd) Annual Meeting in 2024.

Malnutrition and unlicensed teachers

The long-term malnutrition stemming from the 1970s must also be studied more carefully for present-day teachers who may have been the victims of past nutrient deficiencies in their first 1000 days of life and later childhood.

Longitudinal data on malnutrition of teachers themselves may explain their low one-third passing rate in licensure exams today. Normal schools can research this area through their doctoral students in education management.

If indeed the rest of the two-thirds of teachers are not even fit for classroom assignments, their relative abilities in other tasks may have been reason enough for school principals to burden them with administrative assignments. Ironically, this is comparative advantage theory in economics put to practice with a vengeance!

Relatively better at non-teaching jobs, these licensure-failed teachers need to be retooled and upgraded both cognitively and affectively with multiple intelligences approach in normal schools.

Case #1 – Process-induced learning

This is the essence of the Ramon Magsaysay Award-winning Dynamic Learning Program (DLP) of the Central Visayas Institute Foundation (CVIF) of Christopher and Marivic (+) Bernido.

In the CVIF-DLP process of classroom management, expert subject teachers are not the sage on the stage; they lecture only 20 percent of classroom time for a subject field and move to other sections of the same course to present the same introduction to the learning matter for the day.

The rest of the class period is managed by another teacher as students work out module exercises. This homeroom teacher nudges students to answer workbook materials developed by the subject expert teacher who moves around in different sections. Technical questions on modules are not answered by the homeroom teacher.  That is the responsibility of the expert teacher as he/she returns to the class where students writing in their exercise journals may have questions.

The SI potential of DLP arises in engaging more schools whose subject experts and homeroom teachers have to intern with those who have already embraced the Bernido system.  DepEd Sec. Angara has already adopted the CVIF-DLP approach for DepEd, only weeks after I broached the subject to him and his then yet-to-be formed team.  He needs more SI champions for the CVIF-DLP program.

Even less future-ready classroom teachers can be redeployed for complementary roles in producing superior students. Their collaboration abilities in normal schools  must be sharpened with good critical, communications and creativity skills (UNESCO 4Cs of 21st C learning).  This can be a new national SI program by itself – for the AI age, not for the last century which many normal schools are attuned to.

Case # 2 – Quality teacher training

Pre-service SI for normal school students can immerse themselves in good universities, e.g., in world-ranked Philippine higher education institutions that have increased in numbers since pandemic-period trainings, like the CHED-AIM Global Academic Leadership Program (GALP).

Several members of congressional and executive bodies participated in the GALP experiential course, alongside presidents and deans from higher education institutions in eight cohorts, with each lasting several months of blended learning.

This SI should not merely be for special education (SPED) teachers who must be re-taught how to use multiple intelligences in an AI age, the classic approach to flexible learning modalities demonstrated in Sandiwaan Learning Center in Smokey Mountain.

In the same vein, not all universities and colleges are led and managed along the lines of the Philippine Quality Award (PQA) guidelines, the gold standard of organization performance excellence.  Based on the US Malcolm Baldrige quality performance standards that have been the basis of a Philippine law (RA 9013), education institutions have won various levels of PQA recognition.

CHED’s responsible office for incorporating the spirit of such PQA quality excellence must motivate more SI across companies and HEIs owned by the same families, and later branch off to other industries.

Case # 3 – New Learning Theory using AI

New approaches to classroom management in disadvantaged schools, e.g., in Smokey Mountain, is what Fr. Benigno Beltran, SVD, has successfully implemented. He became a Peter Drucker Fellow in Southern California to share his experience in the world-famous revolutionized Manila dumpsite where he lived for more than a quarter century.

Today, Fr. Ben has been illustrating his Convergence Theory of Learning—combining critical thinking, design thinking, and systems thinking—for DepEd’s Alternative Learning System (ALS) program by utilizing AI-age devices, like Augmented Visual Reality. His approach has been demonstrated successfully in the US for some disadvantaged communities through a Filipino-American teacher.

Fr. Ben further developed his convergence theory after exchanging views with peers in the GALP Program where he guest lectured, and networking with MS Innovation in Business students at AIM which inspired his adoption of AVR tools. A different SI he himself designed, this unique approach is what creative educators must generate.

Talking the Walk: Management people speak of various generations of learners who face different learning emergencies, risks, and urgencies.  These issues will be raised from their practical experiences at the MAP – Asia Pacific College (APC) Conference / Workshop on SI and LLL Legislation on April 10-11, 2025 to build a stronger Philippine workforce.

(The author is Chair of the Education Committee of the MAP. He is also a Board Member of Bayan Innovation Group Inc. and St. Paul University Philippines.  Feedback at <map@map.org.ph> and <fmmacaranas@gmail.com>).