| In the traditional “banking approach” to education, the teacher is considered an authority inside the classroom to transmit information and knowledge to the students or learners. The learners are seen as “empty vessels” needing to be filled with knowledge. The teacher talks, the students listen and absorb passively. On the other hand, in the empowering view, the teacher is a facilitator or animator. The teacher works within the framework that the learners are recognized as thinking, creative persons with capacity for action. The aim of the facilitator is to help the learners identify the problems, find the root causes of these problems, and work out practical ways to change the situation. . ...The teacher is a facilitator whose main work is to help students to “unveil” their situation. They will remember much better what they have said and discovered for themselves than what the teacher has told them. Therefore, the teacher-facilitator should not talk much, but should encourage discussion in the group, through asking the right questions. No one has all the answers to the questions, but no one is ever completely ignorant. = = = = = = = In the empowering view, the teacher works within the framework that the learners are recognized as thinking, creative persons, with capacity for action. = = = = = = = The teacher-facilitator needs to summarize when necessary and build on the contributions of the participants, once they have investigated the problem as deeply as they are able, and learnt all they could from one another. The teacher-facilitator has a very important role to play in setting a good learning climate. S(he) needs group leadership skills to be sensitive to the dynamics in the group, be able to draw in the shy people and prevent the talkative ones from dominating. The teacher-facilitator puts emphasis on learning that is group rather than individual, analytical and creative rather than mechanical, and “cooperative” rather than competitive. The concept also inspires one to treat the learning process as a teacher-student partnership, and education as a means towards the realization and advancement of a better or more humane society. . Prescribed texbooks, prescribed pedagogy The traditional teacher has been trained by the authorities in the education bureaucracy, those who are in power, to be mere conveyors or implementors of the prescribed curriculum, textbooks and methodology. The traditional teacher then imbibed the authoritarian attitude of his/her school authorities - to produce docile, submissive and uncritical persons in order to maintain the status quo. .
...Knowledge learned by the students, and even the value judgment developed on whatis “right and wrong,” “good and bad,” the “just from the unjust” are all based from the prescribed curriculum, textbooks and methodology.
. No education is neutral The teacher and the learner should realize that education is not neutral. Education could function as an instrument to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the oppressive and exploitative social order and bring about conformity to it. But education on the other hand could become a practice of freedom, this means both the teacher and learner deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world. 
The development of an educational pedagogy that facilitates that process, inevitably will result to tension and conflict within our society – but certainly, it will also lead to liberation and development. Every teacher is a pupil
Every teacher is always a pupil, and every pupil a teacher. Each person, outside his professional activity, carries on some form of intellectual activity, that is, he/she is a ‘philosopher’, an artist, a person of taste, he/she participates in the particular conception of the world, has a conscious line of moral conduct and therefore contributes to sustain a conception of the world or
to modify it, that is, to bring into being new modes of thought. (Political Writings of Antonio Gramsci) Learner-Centered Approach For education to be effective, the context of the learner should be the foremost consideration. The content and methods of education naturally follows from a clear identification of and identification with the learner. = = = = = = = Every teacher is always a pupil, and every pupil a teacher. Each person carries on some form of intellectual activity… = = = = = = = Equally important is the context of the educator. What does he know? What are his capacities and habits? How did he become an educator? What part of his knowledge is relevant to him? How does the learner know what is relevant to him? What can be learned from the learner? What is their common milieu? What is it about this milieu that brings them together at this particular conjuncture? What power relations operate between them? . ....Their common concern could be “taking careful account of the reading of the world being made by popular groups and expressed in their discourse, their syntax, their semantics, their dreams and desires. (Paolo Freire) . Emphasize Learning! The emphasis of education should be on learning rather than teaching. The more important question perhaps is not what is taught but perhaps how it is taught. If the process of learning is reflective, then the student will learn to think on his own. It is the teacher's task to guide the learning and the development of the pupil through providing experiences and opportunities for experience through which this kind of development may occur. Give your scholar no verbal lessons, he should be taught by experience alone. Let him know nothing because you have told him, but because he has learned it for himself. Let him not be taught science, let him discover it. .
...Does the teacher, for example, encourage and model critical and creative thinking which allows the students to think for
themselves and perhaps even surpass the teacher? Critical thinking is governed by criteria, aims at judgment, is self-correcting and is sensitive to context. Creative thinking, on the other hand, is sensitive to criteria, also aims at judgment, is self-transcending and is governed by context. Together they make up complex thinking. For Rousseau, the pupil is not to be seen as man-in-the-making but as a child, with childish interests and characteristics.
. ...We know nothing of childhood; and with our mistaken notions the further we advance, the further we go astray. The wisest writers devote themselves to what a man ought to know, without asking what a child is capable of learning. They are always looking for the man in the child, without considering what he is before he becomes a man. It must be learner-centered rather than teacher-centered nor subject-centered pedagogy. In the learner-centered approach, we put premium in the diversity and richness of the human species. The mind of the learner is freer, open and pluralistic. It rebuffs fundamentalism or a structured way of looking at the nature of humans. Let us repudiate the current data-memorization based on competition-driven, grades-indicated systems. A child learns to think even before he goes to school, when he acquires the language. Unfortunately, whatever thinking skills a child has are sometimes deadened by the classroom routine. An "educated child" is not necessarily a thinking child. If the child does not learn higher-order thinking at a certain stage, his ability to process information, to think creatively and engage in critical problem-solving may remain elementary. Hence the docile, unreflective, complacent and uncritical young people that the university educators complain about. (Zosimo Lee, UP Philosophy Professor). Conclusion: The stuggle to establish a more humanizing social order is not an easy task, but rather complicated and difficult. The discourse society is threatened by those who use repression to defend the dominant paradigm. . ...And in the face of such situation, we can only rely on the empowerment of the people to keep a healthy discourse, to prevent violent confrontations between advocates of conflicting paradigms. Our hope is that the relative truth would emerge after the clashes of ideas backed by lessons from experiences borne out of social praxis. We can only respond with non-violent means to meet violent repressions. If we meet violence with violence - nothing is resolved, and instead more problems are created. The need for self-sacrifice and unity is quite imperative if we want to resolve social conflicts through non-violence. = = = = = = = Let’s repudiate this data-memorization-based, competition driven, grades-indicated, teacher-centered and commercialized educational system! = = = = = = = ...Lessons fom the satyagraha movement led by Mohandas Gandhi in India, using civil disobedience and other forms of non-violent means.. ended decades of exploitation and oppression under British rule. Gandhi clearly articulated the rationale of satyagraha, when he said that: "An eye for an eye, will only make the whole world blind," and..."the use of brute force bends over the moral force of truth and reason." For the use of violent means by those who want to maintain the dominant and repressive paradigm, in essence, is deeply rooted in insecurities and incapability to meet discourses with reason. The extent of people's empowerment hastens the marginalization of those who advocate dominant and repressive paradigm. Empowerment results in the increasing vigilance of the people in safeguarding their fundamental human rights. Non-violence is the way of the future. The inherent goodness of humans, their love for peace, dignity and harmony, in the end shall prevail. 
LAMBAT-LIWANAG NETWORK for Empowering Paradigms Paradigm No. 7: ‘Light-Seeking and Light-Sharing Education’ The empowering paradigm on education is seeking light as pursuit of reason and not of mere information, as pursuit of wisdom and not of mere knowledge, and the multidirectional sharing of wisdom and knowledge as the basic process of education, instead of the current data-focused, teacher-centered, grades-indicated, competition-driven, purely-intellectual educational approaches. It “reinvents” the teacher as a “sharing and learning facilitator” and textbooks as tools of learning and not authoritative “last word” on anything, and “reinvents” the school as a “sharing and learning community” firmly rooted in the bigger community of stakeholders. It promotes less-structured education systems for children, that would encourage and enhance intuition, aesthetic appreciation and creativity, respect for self and others, love for all forms of life, preference for team play, and basic spirituality. It promotes theorizing from experience and recognizes and enhances sources of skills and knowledge outside the school systems.
LAMBAT-LIWANAG has 11 member-institutions.
Sharing Light within the Academe since 2001. with its 'on-line library' at http://lambat-liwanag.8m.net
| 
No comments:
Post a Comment