Paradigms! William Dar Is Waking Up FAO & PH Educators Mesmerized By School Gardens!

FAO and PH CHEd, you are only playing in school gardens with the girls & boys. 

Wake up, Sleepyheads!

I just saw new Secretary of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie/Servant-Leader shaking the shoulders of sleepyheads FAO and CHEd. Figuratively.

Local and foreign educators are making so much fuss about the value of school gardens – proud image above from fao.org– they do not realize they are making a big mistake in their choice of a paradigm.

Paradigm. Ha!

You can blame the new Manong Willie for starting this national craze about trying to understand paradigms.

Now, what in Heaven's name is a paradigm?!

Let us learn from Investopedia (investopedia.com):

In the investing world, a new paradigm is a revolutionary new concept, idea, or way of doing things that replaces the old beliefs or ways of doing things

So, a paradigm is nothing but a concept, an idea, a belief or way or view of doing things. "School gardens are good for schoolers" is a paradigm. It is good, but not thatgood.

Now you have to make a paradigm shift, changing from old to new paradigm, from schoolchildren to schoolsmarts, from food-minded to business-minded girls and boys!

Yes, I myself previously thought that the cultivation of school gardens made an excellent paradigm for young boys and girls especially in high school. But that changed when I read that on Thursday, 29 August 2019, in a forum at the Central Luzon State University, CLSU, in the City of Muñoz in Nueva Ecija, our Servant-Leader said (from his Facebook sharing of 30 August):

Employability must not only be the end-goal of the academe. It is high time that academic institutions embed innovation and enterprise in (their curricula) as these elements are vital to economic prosperity and competitiveness. CLSU must start this initiative.

You got that? From elementary to high school to college, our educational objective has always been for the graduates to get employed. That is the exact un-sane reason why we always have millions of unemployed.

We always train for a million jobs;
at the same time,
we always create a thousand jobs!

So, what should our colleges be doing? Follow the Leader:

We must teach those boys and girls to be innovators and entrepreneurs themselves while schooling!

From studying for a job laterto creating a job for yourself now, that is quite a paradigm shift for college administrators, not to mention students – but that change must be done. It is time, Manong Willie said, to stop pursuing your job after school and start creating your job while in school!

This is a teacher speaking. Manong Willie studied to be a teacher, with a BS in Agricultural Education (1973) from Benguet State University. Older, I am a teacher myself, with a BSA major in Ag Education (1965) from UP Los Baños. This teacher agrees with that teacher that:

Our schools should now make a paradigm shift from producing graduates looking for jobs to graduates with jobs written on their diplomas. Something devoutly to be wished!@517