For: DISP VALUES SUMMER '09

Believe me, I'd tried for the nth time posting the video that I promised you. But I think there's a need to break the final output into at least 5 parts, 1 minute per part. So, just hang on there. It's been a busy period here in UP. I hope the "registration dust" will settle sometime next week.

I who?

"I" is a weird pronoun, right? When you use it to mean yourself, do you include the person you were 10 years ago? If not, does it mean the person you are right now and not the other one, if you believe you were different, 5 minutes or an hour ago? I think I should suggest instead that we may or may not be the same person we were 1 year or 2 days ago. If you lost a love one a few moments ago, would you rather say that you remain the exact same person you were awhile back? The person you are right now, if you're a father of an adorable kid, must be different from who you were at the time when you were just dreaming to be a father. When you use "I," who exactly is the person that you are referring to? The person you are right now? But then again, here, the temporal referent of “now” is gone. What we actually have appears to be a simple series of nows, but this does not solve the problem. Saying that now covers the past, present, and future, is definitely unacceptable. Well, no one would like to say “now-now-now-now” either; that’s plainly crazy.

Raw thoughts on teaching and research

1. At this point, undergraduate education students are not required to defend a research output (i.e., thesis) in order to get a bachelor’s degree in education. One may say thus that education undergraduate students are not as familiar with methodical research as other undergraduate students from other colleges after graduating from college. I think I would be stating the obvious if I will explain at length why education undergraduate students ought to be familiar with research in education when they enter the graduate school. The purpose of which is very simple: to become fully prepared when they enter the graduate school, which is basically a research school.

2. In terms of value, research in education has yet to be placed at the same level as teaching, I believe, in all teacher education institutions in the Philippines. The U.P. College of Education could make a difference on this. (Research writing need not be an individual task; it could be a group work).

3. It's hard to promote a culture of research in education if it is not an equal of teaching, when it is of lesser value than teaching during promotion period. While teaching performance is important, teachers should also treat research as its equal in terms of value. For it is always necessary, if we do not wish to remain a simple practitioner of some theorists' thoughts in education, to continue to challenge and verify the purported truth of educational theories by way of carrying out confirmatory research. It is only through research that we could test in a disciplined and scholarly fashion the soundness of theories that we often import into our system. It is through research that we could widen and deepen our knowledge of our profession. In addition, it is also equally important for us to come up with our own theories that could be more responsive to the requirements of the unique realities of the Philippine educational culture and situation. Hence, research should be equally valued in the College of Education.

4. It is simply not enough to say that teaching is more important than research in education because the majority says so. It’s no less invalid than saying that the neck of a cow could be found in its stomach simply because the majority believes so. So far, no sufficient reason was presented to fully justify the position that teaching is more important than research that is why the latter should be of prime consideration when we evaluate the merit of one’s application for promotion.

5. I do not mean to suggest that there are no good teachers. There are and they could very well get high scores in the Student Evaluation of Teachers (SET). But does it follow that if your SET score is high, you must be good at teaching? And if your score in the SET is low, does it follow that the teacher is bad at teaching. Note that the teachers’ SET is based on the students’ interpretation—not far removed from their opinion or personal standards—of the evaluation elements. Teachers too may have their own standards of good teaching which may not be identical to the students’ or SET's criteria.
6. This opinion is not being stated to suggest that research is more important than teaching. I am just trying to articulate what I believe to be a more tenable view: that research is as important as teaching. There was a time though when universities were more interested in research than in teaching those who were interested to learn from those who had advanced knowledge were invited to come and be the first students in the history of schooling.

7. We have graduate programs where students are taught not only to teach but also to conduct disciplined research. The purpose of which is to cultivate a culture of independence for it is difficult for the Filipino teachers and educators to apply theories that were built abroad, for these could turn out to be constructs that are not sensitive to the realities of our own changing environment here in the Philippines.

8. In teaching, we cannot expect to effect so many changes. What we could expect is a simple maintenance of the status quo in the sphere of pedagogical theories. For instance, teachers would have largely based their approach in teaching on Skinnerian psychology if no theorist had ever offered a “better” alternative view of the human mind and learning. To be not contended with the existing versions of truths in teaching, learning, pedagogy, curriculum, and other areas of education, we should encourage research. But this, again can't be done effectively if research is not viewed as an equal of teaching.

9. The matter on the value of teaching and research should not be reduced into a simple case of shared issue of teachers wanting to be promoted. A simple casting of vote would allow the teacher, who thinks that research is not as important (or as easy as teaching), to go for a set of criteria where the highest promotion points go to teaching. Apparently, this is not without a problem as, again, the valuation of the teacher’s teaching performance comes from the students alone. Research, as well as publication, should likewise be given equal weight in promotion as it is a proof of the teachers’ individual capacity and independent ability to generate knowledge and to contribute to the current fund of knowledge in education, especially in his/her own country.

10. I don’t see any problem if we are going to place equal premium on research and teaching. It’s a win-win situation as it encourages the teacher to be good both at teaching and research. Whereas, if we are going to put research somewhere below teaching—and note that, so far, no good reason has ever been produced to support this hierarchical setting of value—this can’t be a real case of encouraging research in education. “Encouraging” here is nothing but a mere word from someone who thinks, regardless of the amount of arguments for the research-an-equal-of-teaching thesis, that if you are a teacher in the College of Education, then your research is not as and no more important than your teaching. This is not a win-win situation. Research, here, is apparently at the losing end. A teacher who is dominated by thoughts about promotion points will most likely angle for a high SET score rather than work on research projects THAT ARE CONVERTIBLE INTO PUBLISHABLE JOURNAL ARTICLES, OF COURSE.ⁱ

11. Simply because we are teachers of the College of Education, it does not follow that teaching should be greater in value than research in education. To the question, “Where is the required justification to fully support the view that 'if you are an education teacher, you ought to place the highest premium on teaching and not on research because the latter is lesser in value?'” It's nowehere near in sight. Maybe,that cannot be justified. Teaching should be equally valued even in other colleges and research should be of the same worth as teaching regardless of the college where the faculty is teaching. All teachers, regardless of the college in which they teach, aim to train and educate their students, and such tasks could not be accomplished satisfactorily if teaching and research will not “work” as equals. Every faculty, regardless of his/her college, should place equal premium on research (or its equivalent).ⁱⁱ Every faculty should be both good teachers and researchers (whose works should get published).

ENDNOTES

i I’d like to add that a UP Diliman teacher has three functions: teaching, research, and extension. But I do not know if I could produce a sufficient reason to defend the view that extension is no less important than teaching and research.

ii The College of Music and the College of Fine Arts, and probably several other colleges, have something in place of research. In any case, these counterparts of research, I believe, are not viewed as something of lesser value than teaching. For all we know, some specialists are wont to believe that they could even be more important in value than teaching (e.g., concert performance of music teacher, art products of fine arts teachers). But then again, I shall be quite contented with the view that in education, teaching, and research should be equal in value.

VALUES AND MORAL EDUCATION: AIMS, CONTENT AND PEDAGOGY (Part 3)

Conceptions of Values and Moral Education

In a separate research that I have yet to conclude, one of my findings is that our school teachers have different conceptions of Values and Moral Education. Of the 201 respondents, 43 % believe that Values and Moral Education is critical thinking about evaluative issues, 32 % believe that its function is to transmit a ready set of non-religious values, and 17 % believed that it is a case of inculcating in the students a ready set of religious values. In sum, 49 % of the 201 respondents believe that Values and Moral Education is basically values transmission, inculcation, or indoctrination. The rest, or the remaining 8 %, thought that their notions of Values and Moral Education are not reflected in any of the given definitions.

You are probably asking now: What does this mean? Should the finding that schoolteachers have different notions of Values and Moral Education be a problem? Yes, it is a problem.

The lack of uniformity in AIMS, CONTENT, and PEDAGOGY is often raised about Values and Moral Education. It is said to have no stable, singular identity, and this is a problem that cannot be raised about Math and Science as the conduct of education in these areas of study are more or less stable and uniform in the modern schools.

As we all know, Science education has factual claims to offer and examine. Knowledge in Science, furthermore, is generated by way of inductive thinking and reasoning. In this area, a sound knowledge claim is grounded in material or observed evidence. So, when you say, for instance, to state the Law of Inertia, “A body will remain in its state unless it is acted upon by an outside force,” you are not saying this as though it is true in itself, as though it is a doctrinal truth. Galileo arrived at this general formulation after gathering first the relevant data from which he based his generalization that is the Law of Inertia. Meanwhile, in Mathematics, one cannot just claim that a mathematical proposition, say, 2+2 is 4, is true for no reason at all. There has to be a reason why such proposition is true. The truth of which is demonstrable by appeal to mathematical evidence. Now, the key word in Math and Science is REASON. The use of which is a necessary condition in order for Math and Science to exist the way they do in the context of formal education. And there simply is no quarrel about this among the teachers of Math and Science. The agreement as to the role of Math and Science education--that is to develop the critical, cognitive, inductive, and deductive reasoning abilities of students--remains the same, and there is no impending quarrel as to the meaning of such elements of formal education.

Values transmission

Such is not the status of Values and Moral Education as it comes in many forms. Allow me to discuss what I believe to be the most familiar version of Values and Moral Education. This is Values and Moral Education in the form of values transmission, indoctrination, or inculcation. These expressions suggest the kind of aims, content and pedagogy of Values and Moral Education when it is conceived as a formal education component whose purpose is to transmit selected doctrines which are, more or less, thought to be universal or trans-cultural values. The proponents and those who share this version of Values and Moral Education see no problem in transmitting values that are believed to be the requisites of living a good or righteous life. The set of values, despite the belief of many that it is universally accepted, of course, could vary from one school to another. But the endorsers of certain values are, more or less, dominated by the attitude that what they preach, if adopted, will transform a human being into a morally upright person.

Moral and evaluative reasoning in Values and Moral Education

What should Values and Moral Education be? Just like Math and Science, Values and Moral Education should place equal premium on critical thinking, rational doubting, reasoning, and logical skepticism. Specifically, because it should deal with rational thinking, Values and Moral Education should aim to cultivate the moral or evaluative reasoning abilities of the students. Only through this approach could we possibly maintain the thesis that Values and Moral Education is as meaningful as Math and Science. Only when Values and Moral Education places the same value on the use of reason, when addressing a certain problem or issue, will it count as a legitimate equal of Math and Science.

Will Values and Moral Education then be so useful in real-life situation if it is going to be chiefly concerned with the cultivation of the moral reasoning and other intellectual abilities of the students? Yes, of course. Let me give some examples where having a good deal of training and education in moral and evaluative reasoning is practically valuable.

In any country where the people are supposed to have the freedom to CHOOSE their local and national leaders, good moral and evaluative reasoning is highly important. What will happen to a country whose electorate is composed of voters who are dismally lacking in sophisticated rational VALUATION skills is not difficult to tell. We don’t have to look at other countries in order to say that it will be easy for the incompetent politicians to take those voters who are not capable of reasoned valuation for a ride. Let me give some names: Erap, Noli De Castro, Jaworski, Sotto, Jinggoy Estrada, Lapid, the Revillas, and Freddie Webb. They are a bunch of proofs that a huge number of our voting population lack the capacity to rationally evaluate and choose our national leaders. I think I don’t have to go as far as naming some more clowns that many voters chose to represent them at the House of Representatives. Please pay attention to the word “CHOOSE” because valuing is an instance of choosing. We value by choice. And again the question is, “Do our voters choose or value by rational means?”

Just imagine if all our voters are capable of making highly rational choices. Of course, I am not meaning to suggest that all those who voted for the likes of Lito Lapid and Bong Revilla are stupid valuers. But neither do I mean to say, and I will never do, that most of Lapid’s and Revilla’s supporters are highly rational valuers like you. Did you ever ask yourselves why the likes of Lapid and Revilla will never ever campaign for their candidacy in academic institutions like the University of the Philippines? Yes, because it is not easy to take rational, educated, or well-schooled valuers for a ride. Rational valuers cannot be persuaded by a simple appeal to emotion and popularity, which is what actors- and actresses-turned-politicians are usually doing during the campaign period. Rational valuers can only be persuaded by appeal to reason.

Aside from this, of course, we need a good deal of abilities to do evaluative and moral reasoning if we wish to arrive at a resolution to important value or moral issues. Some of such issues are the following: (1) Should I continue with my pregnancy even if I don’t have the means to support my child? (2) Should we re-activate the death penalty? (3) Is it right for parents to have their child baptized long before the child could make his/her own choice? (4) Should I leave the country and work for the people of other countries? (5) Is it right to legalize same sex marriage? (6) Should we allow divorce? All of these are important value issues for which rational answers are hard to come by when the valuer was schooled in the tradition of VALUES INDOCTRINATION. What the valuer needs, to be a rational solver of value issues, is a solid training in moral and evaluative reasoning.

I'll begin with the aims of Values and Moral Education in my next post.