when are we going to learn from others?

Taken from the US National Education Association (NEA) January 2007 cover story:

“Global competitiveness depends on students’ abilities to innovate and invent, not on their test scores,” agrees Yong Zhao, professor and director of the U.S.-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence at Michigan State University. America has long embraced its students’ passion, ingenuity, dreams, and ideas—none of which can be measured by test scores, says Zhao. Asia, on the other hand, has traditionally valued test scores above all else. Even where scores are high and innovative educational approaches are valued, as in Singapore, it’s still felt that testing plays too much of a role.

authority and the student-teacher divide

 

I feel that a lot of what makes up the student-teacher divide is the concept of authority. Authority carries with it such a depth of meaning that it is easy to jump to false implications. Such as “I Know A Lot” = Authority = Respect Me = I Am Powerful. I have experienced again and again the way “higher-ups” feel they have to exert themselves, as if their “authority” was the basis of having a student-teacher relationship (not that kind of relationship, silly).

Yes, the dictionary says that authority is the power or right to give orders and enforce obedience. But in the complete sense of the word, obedience is a personal decision on the part of the follower. Therefore, as long as the student never completely obeys the teacher, the teacher does not have authority.

cognitive dissonance

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.

stuck in objectivity

Ewan McIntosh (a Scottish educator) says that knowledge is more than knowing; it is adding wisdom to the equation. Education is about what we have learned in the past and what more could we know. It’s about how do we know this information?

For example, I am asked to read handouts about art from the 15th century to the present. It is in outline form, presenting the major movements in art, their “founders”, the major artists and their dates of birth, et cetera:

I. Expressionism (late 19th to 20th century)
- paintings use a lot of color and is grotesque
- emphasizes the feelings of the painter
- Painter is the founding father (19XX – 19XX)
- born in Berlin
- famous work of art: two women screaming (19XX)
- died of hunger

II. Impressionism (early 19th century)
- interested in objective representation
- dealt mostly in landscapes
- Another Painter started the movement (18XX-19XX)
- born and died in Paris
- most famous painting: another weird painting

scihi once more

You never really leave scihi.
You take it with you.

It’s sappy and mushy and corny, I know. But observing myself take zoology tests or science and society tests or calculus tests, even finance and accounting tests in Ateneo, there’s a lot of scihi in my taking them.

I’ve never visited the school since I graduated, I might do so this Christmas break. But I hear a lot of feedback, straight from my brother, from my mom, from teachers, from other students, from alumni. Most of them stress how things have changed.

Well I don’t really think so. Maybe not yet.
I hear there are a lot of disappointing things but I do hear things to be proud of too. Especially when we widen our comfort zones and look everywhere else.

let us have a vision

Let us have a vision.
Though we may be weary of trying
to break free from the oppressive truths of our present;
Let us have a vision of better things -
When looking around us brings only despair,
When what we long to change seems unchangeable
And the odds against us insurmountable,
When our efforts are hindered at every turn
so that some lose hope
and some lose will
and some stop caring at all.
Let us have a vision of better things
And a burning passion
to light the darkness of the unbelievers
and consume the fears of the fearful.
Let us have a vision of better things
And let us not stop reaching for it
For we are men, and worthy of a better fate
than this.

I agree that sometimes, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. My beef with people who defend the status quo (either by actively or passively resisting efforts towards change) is this: if we can have something better why not go for it? I mean, the French people didn’t tell themselves, “let’s stay oppressed because it’s going to teach us to stomach hunger and cope with poverty and make us ‘better’ persons in the end” – they revolted and brought about a better social order. Which is not to say that we are peasants, or that we should revolt.

SciHi Culture As I See It

The first time I entered the gates of SciHi at around February of 2002 for the Entrance Exams, I was awed. I was intimidated. With all the good feedback I had heard prior to that day, why wouldn’t I be? I was trying my luck at entering such an esteemed institution where only a chosen few get in and an even smaller number of students actually make it to graduation.

A few months after, I found myself being interviewed by my then soon-to-be mentors. I was intimidated. With God’s grace, I got in. So June came and all those first day jitters came rushing through me. It was an entirely new environment that I was in. Here, the teachers were no longer addressed ‘Tita’ or ‘Tito’ as they were in my previous school. I now had to say ‘Ma’am’ and ‘Sir’. I got rid of my knee-length socks and tried to acquaint my feet with ankle-length socks. I did not go home for lunch either. This was also my first encounter with a very formal flag ceremony in a school campus. My general impression that day was that the student body must really be active in the school’s affairs since they were the ones who led the welcome ceremony for the freshmen. They took care of the order during the tour around the campus. The students were everywhere, busy preparing for the day’s activities. I was struck by the sense of family I saw among the students during the Eucharistic celebration. Everyone reached their hands out during the ‘Our Father’ and I thought to myself how wonderful it was to now be part of that family. Freshman year was all right. We were in that stage of adjustment to SciHi culture – the colorful grand rallies for Student Government Elections, the numerous projects especially come Open House and the cramming… for some, this actually worked. Then came sophomore year, and based on experience, this was the most ‘laid-back’ time of all. We were no longer the newbies and were fairly adjusted to high school life – or at least we thought we were.

It was in junior year that I got to see SciHi at its best and ‘not-so-best’. With all the extra-curricular activities I took part in, I realized how well-respected SciHi is by other schools, both public and private. I realized how fortunate we are to have the best teachers, breathable classrooms where students each have a seat, and even if we had to share some books at times, the student-book ratio never reached 10:1. I say this because I have seen other public high school students who have just the opposite of what we have in SciHi. It indeed is a sad reality to think that in these public high schools, there too, are highly-competitive students deprived of quality education they deserve. We also faced challenges of our own in the Student Government. A lot of issues were at hand. And I realized that if we wanted change and there were only a number of students and teachers involved, we could not have that change. We needed the full support of the school. I was disheartened by the fact that after all the hard work the Student Government had put to push projects with the help of the student body, they would be turned down for some reason. Junior year was tough – having to juggle academics with extra-curricular activities. I was so into these extra-curricular activities that my academics suffered. I know this was wrong but I don’t regret it for it was in these activities that I was exposed to the real world. I got a better glimpse and feel of life that I did not when confined to the walls of the classroom.

Senior year came. I thought things would be easier. On the contrary, things just got tougher. Pressure was on from both academic and extra-curricular responsibilities. There were times when I really wanted to give up on the things I had hoped for the school, the organization and even myself. Idealistic as it may sound, this was what I honestly felt. I was driven by the thought that if I gave up now, it was as if I had wasted all the efforts of the students that came before.

SciHi life, as I’d like to put it, is ‘lisud na lingaw’. More than the chemical equations, scientific names and mathematical formulas we had to learn and even memorize, SciHi taught me LIFE. I am and will be forever grateful to my alma mater.

STILL hoping for the best,
Patricia Davide
SciHi ‘06

sexual promiscuity

wow… i can’t believe how degrading it is to listen to conversations intiated by students in scihi.. well, for the fact that i myself, am a student. not that i am against the sharing of ideas in regards to sex and other personal issues, but conversing in a way that sounds as if you actually think it’s ADVISABLE to indulge in such an act at this early age… not only is this against the codes of the bible but it also depicts how ignorant and undertrained we are in the field of sex education… but, what’s more horrifying is that students ACTUALLY do that… in our batch there’s supposedly 37 pairs who are sexually active (and what’s more, LESS that 50 students are involved in this so-called “37k”, meaning some have more than 1 partner…) and almost all of the boys openly say that the masturbate on a very frequent basis (and take note, they say it in front of girls… and vice versa)
i should say, i am utterly disgusted by this stature of the students in our school… our school was established to create future leaders… not future prostitutes and drag queens….
how i pity those misled lives…

—

This my friends, is from an anonymous commenter on the site. How true is this really? Do you agree with his statements? Why or why not?

living with the no-going-out law

Fellow sayhayistas,

Next year we may likely forever lose the freedom of going outside during lunchtime to merrily skip and frolick like children among the streets beyond. Sad as it is, I do not think we can prevent this sad circumstance from permanently imposing itself. (Delay, maybe, but prevent, no)

So I ask of you, if we cannot thwart this maniacal assertion of communistic power*, we might as well go ahead and make it better for all of us.

Pls.give suggestions what you want changed/added/maintained inside the school premises if the “No-go-outy Law” is implemented.

- Catherine Valendez 

TIPON SA GITNAAAAAA!!!!! Dec 6 issue

This morning, mam chin called out for a “tipon sa gitna”. At first, she talked about the many recent achievements that some scihi students have been achieveing… Secondly, she commended the SSG on their efforts to make the campus clean and orderly…

But what percolated (got through) to me most was her statement(please do correct me if i don’t get this right, thanks!): “There are many happenings in our country, place and school. MANY ARE TRYING TO DESTROY US. But what is important is WE KNOW WE ARE RIGHT.”

I come to think about it… Who are destroying the school?

*Note: According to a some sources, and I know some can attest to the fact that Mam Chin has had access aleady to this blog….