Reinvention of education

PUNCHLINE

Ike Seneres

What is bigger than a paradigm shift? I think it was Bill Gates who said that a “sea change” is bigger than a paradigm shift. The present paradigm in Philippine education emphasizes the importance of teachers, classrooms and textbooks, and apparently nothing else. That has been the paradigm in this country for many decades now, and perhaps it is time to think about having a sea change in this area of our national life.

In the budgeting system of the Philippine government, the salaries of teachers are taken from miscellaneous operating and other expenses (MOOE) while the allocations for the construction of classrooms and the procurement of textbooks are taken from capital expenses. It is therefore understandable how and why the budgets for public education are easily eaten up by these two line items.

It may still take a long time before it becomes the norm, but many private schools in the Philippines are already using desktop computers and handheld devices as the replacement for textbooks. So far, classrooms and teachers are not yet being replaced by whatever, but it seems that the usefulness of classrooms would ultimately decline as more handheld devices would be used to replace desktop computers.

Dr. Sugata Mitra, a well respected Indian educator from the United Kingdom argues that students could learn on their own even without teachers, for as long as they are given access to computers and the internet. He is careful to add however that teachers could still be useful as “coaches” or as “cheerleaders”, who could prod the students to do more, in ways that are akin to positive re-enforcement.

As I understand it from the approach of Dr. Mitra, students would no longer need classrooms either, because they could use any space where they could come together and learn together, and that could either be inside any room or under any tree for that matter. To put it in another way, it is now the virtual content in the internet that becomes more important, and not the physical space of a classroom.

There is really a thin line between teaching and learning, but the approach of Mitra intensifies the difference between the two, as “teaching” drifts away from “learning” because the former functions more like pedagogy, the science of teaching. Conversely, learning drifts away from “teaching” because the former functions more like a process of “discovery”, actually more like going into exercises of self-instruction, or self-teaching if you please.

Mitra first became famous around 1999, when he placed a computer in a hole in a wall in India, and because of that, he was able to prove that kids could learn how to use a computer on their own, and not only that, they could also teach themselves English and other subjects without anyone helping them, meaning to say without any teachers around. Years later, he was able to prove that older people halfway across the world could help these kids through positive re-enforcement.

Mitra’s latest advocacy is to promote what he calls “schools in the cloud”, meaning to say distance learning websites that are powered by the internet cloud. His idea comes at the right time, because there is now plenty of hardware and software that are based in the cloud, just waiting for some useful applications. In the final analysis however, the issue is not really what is available on the server side, but the availability of affordable devices at the user side.

It came sooner than we expected it, but internet capable cell phones are already in the market, and are already affordable, especially with the instalment plans that are offered by the telecom companies. Conversely, tablets and other handheld devices are now being sold at about the same price as cell phones, so there is no doubt that internet based learning is already a reality, a real opportunity that we should now take advantage of.

Fortunately, the Department of Education already has an Alternative Learning System (ALS) in place, and its systems and procedures actually fit the idea of “schools in the cloud” to a tee. It is multi-grade, and instead of teachers, the course delivery is assisted by tutors who could actually function like the “cheerleaders” that Mitra has suggested.

The newer handheld devices are probably the best to use for educational purposes, but as I see it, even older desktops are still good to use. The machines at the user side could vary depending on what are available, but what is important is that the educational content at the server side is available and accessible by any student at any time, using any available means. All told, what is really important here is the availability of the right bandwidth that could support the systems requirements.

I believe that there are many private companies and civic organizations that could help in making online education more available to more students in many places where they are needed most. These could be children in the ancestral domains or in distant islands. Do not be surprised, but these could also be children in urban poor communities who are so near the schools, but are too far from them in terms of real access.

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