In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of incompatibility between two cognitions (behavior, attitudes, beliefs). For example, if you believe you’re an honest person but cheat all the time, you’re bound to become messed up: guilt trips, identity confusion, and all that.
I’d like to propose that the reason why we’re not happy with our present systems is the cognitive dissonance that exists in the school.
Cognition 1: The school’s official vision:
The Cebu City National Science High School provides the pool of students who are proficient in Science, Mathematics, and English imbued with moral values, and who will pursue Science and Technology oriented careers in preparation for their leadership roles in the Philippine society.
To back that up, we follow all sorts of rigorous curricula and policies. Students are required to master a dizzying range of competencies across many disciplines. Well and good, is it not?
Cognition 2: The “realities of life”
Practicality dictates that 60% of each graduating class take up nursing or whatever course is necessary to get a high-paying job after college. These last few years, how many of our graduates have gone on to science and technology oriented careers? How many are now in ‘leadership roles’ in our society? Not much I guess, because our country does not have the right infrastructure to take care of graduates who want to go into S&T. It does not pay off to be a scientist, or to be in the academe so why bother?
Cognition 1 obviously does not agree with Cognition 2, and vice versa. The scary thing is that even our teachers and administrators have fallen for this dissonance, which means that they no longer encourage students to pursue S&T careers. Instead, we are taught that “What good is it to have great ideas if you can’t feed your family?”.
The scarier thing is when the dissonance manifests ourselves in daily learning. What’s the use of learning [insert subject here] if I’m going to take Nursing anyway? The need-to-learn-the-fundamentals pitch won’t work. Why? Because if we won’t be building higher education on our fundamentals in the near future, we’ll just forget them.
Anyway, the only way to fix the dissonance is to face the issues directly. Do we stick with the vision and instill in the students a sense of passion and martyrdom to pursue the less-rewarding path? Or we can continue to ignore our vision (if so, we don’t need a demanding curriculum) and instead focus on graduating students for the job market. One way is definitely easier than another.
I believe our educators should really consider this. And if there is something here that you don’t agree with, don’t just close the browser. Tell me about it.
3 January 2007 at 8:16 pm
i’d go for the martyrdom part
i believe that a high salary job wouldn’t give much meaning to one’s life
touching other’s life will
ridiculous?
maybe
but it does seem worthdoing
3 January 2007 at 8:18 pm
steve.
naa nya ko’y ipa.basa nimu na handout namu sa english..
it’s totally relevant to this post.
i totally agree..
sad kaayo.
i wanted to become a marine biologist pero
matud sa usa ka teacher sa scihi, no less
[na, btw, marine bio yang course]
“Ayaw day.. gamay ra kaayo’g oppurtunities diri..
you’ll end up teaching like me..”
sad kaayo noh..?
pero naa baya jud xay point.
why support the idealistic dreams that your student has?
why not just save her the pain of suffering the consequences twenty years down the line, knowing that you could have done something to prevent it?
sayang.
about:
The scarier thing is when the dissonance manifests ourselves in daily learning. What’s the use of learning [insert subject here] if I’m going to take Nursing anyway?
this is so true!
pero unsaon man nato pag”instill” ani na passion sa mga estudyante?
we all still have to think of practicality.
no one can afford to “suffer” for everyone else
because everyone wants in on the security of
“here and now”..
hahaii.
8 January 2007 at 9:55 pm
Nice piece Steve.
Now take your scope country-wide and you will the root of these problems.
As a sidenote, there was an article in the local papers recently about doctors making career shift into nursing to work abroad.
This news made it to one of our local news channels — link below
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/DR_JACINTOS_CHOICE?SITE=1010WINS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Dr Jacinto has his reasons
Going back to your point – Stick with the vision or shift focus on the job market.
The vision which was written 30 or so odd years before, is now overshadowed by the demand for globalization. I believe we should stick to it even if the scope has expanded.
As for focusing the students to the needs of the job market, Vocational schools at one point were supposedly geared towards this, but you could only go so far without a college degree.
My take on this is – the door is open, if people can’t handle the load, I believe they can transfer out.
Easy is not equal to SciHi
But man if you make it, you’ve accomplished something in your life, and you’re on to bigger and better things.
4 February 2007 at 9:35 am
hi proverbsthree
You woke me up. It’s only when I read your comment (and I know you’re referring to me) did I realize how far I am now, far from being an idealist I used to be.
I just wanted to share to you what’s in my heart, I’m really dying to go back to our country. Perhaps, I’d say my coming here in the U.S. gives me the needed opportunity to reflect on the real purpose of life. I might have shared to you guys one time about the value of practicality. Well, being pragmatist at one end would keep you afloat especially in our country’s situation. But I know it’s not the real solution. But palliative as it is, it eases somehow the gnawing problems that we are in which obviously affect our personal life. Thank you for this wake up call. I really need this somehow.
21 March 2007 at 7:10 pm
Somehow, I disagree with cognition 2. I don’t know, but looking through the circumstances, maybe you’re right. Still, I have to express this one:
XiHi is, of course, an institution focused much on S&T. Though there are a lot of students who have better performance on Mathematics (except Geom…jowkz) than on Science and Tech. But How do you define S&T anyway?
It has been a long-term idea that Science is a simply a complex study to live a better life…and if possible, to live the best life you could. It is simply an analogy that leads all of us to utilize more our logical abilities and talents. It may not be noticed, though, but science is also a second term of life. Biology may suck sometimes, and memorization may not be an intermediate way of learning, but all we can learn help us acquire. If we think most courses taken up by XiHi alumni are not related to Science, then we may be logically wrong. One fact, of course, is that nursing ranks no. 1 course here in the Philippines. That thing may not be much of a proof. Second, Science is not the “Sayans” we know that only deals with terms of diseases, the systems in our body, etc. Science, although not realized, is a device that enhances our skills (on some point, of course). It sharpens our mind, it forces our gray-matters to allocate more room for stock knowledge, it intimidately deals with Math (Chem and Physics and etc.) and it, most of all, helps us guard our body in case we notice some symptoms we learned in class. It may be, at some point, disappoint us if we take a course we think is not related to the curricula we follow. But the one that’s wrong with us, too, is the way we think. A negative disposition may help us notice and be critical sometimes. Still, a positive disposition is an armour we grasp to move on in life. If you disagree, or don’t believe this, or may have other opinions, I think it might be best if you watch the documentary “The Secret”. It can help a lot in life, and you’ll know how the Universe is related to each thing on Earth. You’ll know how the universe responds to each thing, how related we all are with one another and with the things and factors that influence our lives.
I may be a little out of topic, sorry! LOL
~F. ;D (2nd yr. 0607) Zopysrock!
27 February 2008 at 4:44 pm
all alumni of scihi please join our new alumni site, students are welcome to join also:
http://www.scihi-cebu.com/forum/index.php?referrerid=171
let us unite and address this concern together post your ideas on the site and we will go from there…..