UP System: The Trouble With Teachers Is That The Learners Know Better!

This is a teacher speaking, an agriculturist, UP '65 (BSA Ag Edu), a Civil Service Professional (80.6%), wide reader, natural-born thinker and self-taught creative writer – I pity grade schoolers, high schoolers and college students who are forced to learn by rote, to memorize without understanding. Happened to me!

“Teaching-Learning” image from Timeshighereducation.com)

I am a farmer’s son; naturally, my favorite people are the farmers, male. Today, how do we teach farmers? Mostly by telling them who, what, where, when, why, how, and how long. We expect them to simply listen and obey. They are half-empty vessels of existence that must be filled up with knowledge.

I am reading a Facebook post by my alma mater UP Los Baños: “ILC Is Now The Center For The Advancement Of Teaching And Learning” (13 Jan 2022, UPLB.edu.ph), that which says:

UP President Danilo L Concepcion approved the proposal of UPLB to pilot the expansion of the mandate of the Interactive Learning Center (ILC) through its reorganization into the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CATL). This was after the UP President’s Advisory Council (PAC) endorsed for President Concepcion’s approval… the “Pilot Expansion of the Mandate of the UPLB ILC and its Reorganization as the CATL, consolidating the Functions of Various UPLB Committees to Improve Teaching and Learning.” President Concepcion approved this endorsement on 03 Dec 2021.

Googling, this is the first time I learn that UP Diliman itself has an ILC. Now then, from a clear single mandate of “interactive learning” to a double mandate of “teaching and learning” – the UP System has in effect and in fact reinvented education into 2 separate activities:

Teaching on the part of the teacher and
Learning on the part of the student –
2 distinct, separate activities.
With the UPLB ILC becoming the CATL, the UP System has reinvented education. This teacher now ask: Is that good or bad for the Philippine Educational System? After all, UP is the National University System.

As a mere citizen, I cannot disapprove of this seemingly-simple-but-actually-complicated educational move by my alma mater UP, but I do not approve of it either! To separate the teaching from the learning is to separate the teacher from the learner, no ifs and buts.

As a UP-taught teacher and a self-taught creative thinker, I have come to realize that, as the title of my essay puts it, “The Trouble With Teachers Is That The Learners Know Better!” The teachers teach by rote; the learners learn by understanding – and the teachers have never learned from the learners how to teach!

“Advancement Of Teaching And Learning.” UP wants to advance the use of digital tools in teaching, which is good, but UP is separating the use of digital tools in learning, which is bad!

UP Diliman: Above, the superimposed image I got from the ILC Diliman Facebook post is “Inc” as it is, but the words are clear about what they are trying to display: “Upgrade to Interactive.”

UPLB: “Forget Interactive.”

FAH: “What is the UP System trying to prove!?”@517