Can Your Children Get An Adequate Education In Cebu?

[JJReyes]

I would add that all too many schools, especially public schools, harm your child's education rather than helping. The most damaging thing they teach children is that learning is not fun and should be avoided. When learning really is very natural and almost all children through their play are actually learning life skills. If I had children I would keep them out of formally organized schools whether public or private and try unschooling and peaceful parenting.

 

My two sons attended the University of Hawaii Laboratory School. It was so much fun they would cry if an illness prevented them from attending classes. As a lab school where new curriculum was tested (It was part of the UH Curriculum Research & Development Group), the best education practices prevailed. The first is the campus size is 500 or less. That's K to 12. The small campus permitted lower grade student to interact with those in high school through a big brother, big sister program. A school play would include students of all ages. The same with the cafeteria. Everyone had lunch as a group and the benches were mixed ages. 

 

According to an education researcher at CRDG, the origins of American public education was a one class room school at the village level. After the launch of Sputnik by the Russians, the United States felt we had fallen behind in competitiveness. Government officials pointed out that the Soviet system were huge school factories such as high schools with 2,000 to 3,000 students. Politicians changed the school model. The Soviet system collapsed. No one wants to admit that the US education model, copied from the Russians, is also a failed system. Another important point is the Lab School is "inquiry" or "discovery" method whereas many public schools, including those in the Philippines, are still "knowledge" base. The knowledge model crams you with information to pass the test. Inquiry teaches you to think.

Edited June 16, 2013 by JJReyes

[Papa Carl]

Very interesting topic, and some equally interesting comments. As my daughter is now 2 years and 6 months, I have started to take seriously what we are going to do about education for her. 

 

I would prefer to stay in the Philippines, as I believe the attitude towards learning here is much better that in either the UK or Canada, ( from my experience of both).

 

I know there are around 10 "International Schools" in Angeles, some of which I know either the "Head Teacher, or Principal" or teachers, in others I know friends who have sent their children.

 

Many thanks for every ones contribution.

 

Papa Carl

[Thomas]

Another important point is the Lab School is "inquiry" or "discovery" method whereas many public schools, including those in the Philippines, are still "knowledge" base. The knowledge model crams you with information to pass the test. Inquiry teaches you to think.

In Denmark it excist an excelent MIX of students lead discovery and adjusting to the national school plan, so they suit to switch to other schools between years.

It's a small school idea, where they let 1-6 graders go together, the older assist the younger volontaringly.

1. A period starts with a teacher read a novel for the whole school.

2. Then the students tell what they got courious to learn.

3. The teachers chose between these ideas, which of them suit best to the national school plan. ONLY allowed to chose ampng ideas from the students. 

4. The chosen ideas are adjusted to suit each age.

5. The students get information what's during that period.

6. Each student decide SELF what order they want to do things and how much time to spend on each part.

7. In end of the period each student give "grades" at THEMSELF. (Type: This I did good, but this part I didn't made any good. I did the mistake to spend to litle time at it.) 

And this is made by themselfes by 1st graders too!

 

It would be expected at least the youngest would want to drawing and such first, but no one did! Almost all went to library first, because as one of the small kids explained: "Because otherwice I will not know how to do the other things" !

 

Bohnus: No bullying in the school !

[JJReyes]

I know there are around 10 "International Schools" in Angeles, some of which I know either the "Head Teacher, or Principal" or teachers, in others I know friends who have sent their children.

 

Excellent approach. After our Honolulu arrival, we spent 3 weeks going to different public schools interviewing school principals. Apparently, it is unheard of because the public school depends on your area of residence. Sometimes they will give a school district exception if there is a compelling reason. As soon as the children got in, my wife immediately volunteered as the classroom mom. She contacted other parents to chaperon school outings; bring snacks to sports events; arrange tutoring if anyone fell behind; etc. Whose children got the most attention?

 

There was a famous Harvard Department of Education Psychology experiment where a team of researchers went to schools; did all sorts of elaborate "advanced testing" and informed the teachers which students will do well before the end of the school year. Never mind if the selected students were over achievers or under performing. The selections, unknown to the teachers, were actually random. Year end testing showed vast improvement because the teachers, knowing the prediction, gave the selected students more attention and harder class work.  

[JJReyes]

 

In Denmark it excist an excelent MIX of students lead discovery and adjusting to the national school plan, so they suit to switch to other schools between years. It's a small school idea, where they let 1-6 graders go together, the older assist the younger volontaringly.

 

A lot of the education experimentation at the UH Lab School are based on the Scandinavian model. Our granddaughter learning three languages at the same time actually comes from Sweden where multiple languages are learned through facial association. One parent speaks only Swedish with a child, another in English, and a grandparent in German. The child is able to separate languages based on facial recognition. When the Chinese teacher is in the classroom (twice a week), all the students at our granddaughter's school are required to speak in Mandarin with the teacher and their fellow students. 

 

I heard that the University of the Philippines, Ateneo and De La Salle also have lab schools, but I am not familiar with their programs. The top private schools in the Philippines are switching or have already switched to the inquiry method. The Department of Education (DeptEd) knows it's superior, but they can't switch for several reasons.

 

1. Teachers and their unions will fight it because they were never taught the methodology.

 

2. Everything will have to be re-oriented including the textbooks.

 

3. How do you test students? It's easier using the multiple choice testing method, which is knowledge based.

[Thomas]

A lot of the education experimentation at the UH Lab School are based on the Scandinavian model. Our granddaughter learning three languages at the same time actually comes from Sweden where multiple languages are learned through facial association. One parent speaks only Swedish with a child, another in English, and a grandparent in German. The child is able to separate languages based on facial recognition.

Yes. Here it's common immigrants teach their kids their home langauge by talking it at home even when the kid is born in Sweden.

Plus they learn Swedish outside playing and in daycare centers.

In school we are teached several languages. Normaly first English, then chose German or French and later chose "any" it's enough students wanting it in that school  and it's a teacher available (e g Spanish, Italian, Russian or Chinese.)

 

I became friend with some refugees from Chile back when they run away from the military dictatorship. They had some small kids, which looked confused when I spoke Spanish to them  :)

Later they could go back to visit relatives in Chile. 

-Don't you think Junior speak good Spanish? said the father proud.

-Speak Spanish?! said the grandfather. He say only swear words...

:hystery:

[relcarve25]

 

Another important point is the Lab School is "inquiry" or "discovery" method whereas many public schools, including those in the Philippines, are still "knowledge" base. The knowledge model crams you with information to pass the test. Inquiry teaches you to think.

In Denmark it excist an excelent MIX of students lead discovery and adjusting to the national school plan, so they suit to switch to other schools between years.

It's a small school idea, where they let 1-6 graders go together, the older assist the younger volontaringly.

1. A period starts with a teacher read a novel for the whole school.

2. Then the students tell what they got courious to learn.

3. The teachers chose between these ideas, which of them suit best to the national school plan. ONLY allowed to chose ampng ideas from the students. 

4. The chosen ideas are adjusted to suit each age.

5. The students get information what's during that period.

6. Each student decide SELF what order they want to do things and how much time to spend on each part.

7. In end of the period each student give "grades" at THEMSELF. (Type: This I did good, but this part I didn't made any good. I did the mistake to spend to litle time at it.) 

And this is made by themselfes by 1st graders too!

 

It would be expected at least the youngest would want to drawing and such first, but no one did! Almost all went to library first, because as one of the small kids explained: "Because otherwice I will not know how to do the other things" !

 

Bohnus: No bullying in the school !

 

Hi Thomas!- I've been very busy for a few weeks and have just noticed your input, and that of J.J. Reyes. As always you can put an interesting perspective on a topic- a mixture of Swedish culture and relevant observation.

 

   I'm familiar with some of the 'Discovery' teaching methods and must admit that, when I was a young and enthusiastic advocate of attempting new approaches and methodology to the pedagogical process, I strongly approved of such methodology. Now that I'm much, much, 'longer in the tooth,' and have been personally involved in trying to implement many innovative approaches to learning, I find myself to be pretty cynical in my attitude to such changes. You see the one thing which has always struck me with the Montessori or Discovery type of teaching is the degree of 'idealism' involved- and indeed the extreme amount of commitment required on the part of the teachers. Whilst in theory such teaching can, and maybe sometimes does, involve the pupils in superior learning and creative thinking it always comes back to several main factors;

• Such teaching requires enormous levels of resourcing and equipping of the school/institution. Not only is this far too expensive for the majority of countries to try to implement on any large scale, but the 'management' of these resources and facilities requires extensive training and the learning of many new skills on the part of the staff. It is easy to say that this is not true and that all you need is a few books, computers and odds and ends but I would challenge anyone to try to do this successfully, and experience the process as I have, in order to understand my reasoning.
•  
• In most countries the majority of existing teachers, and those newly in training, are not equipped for such approaches. It requires a complete overthrow of almost everything they have been trained to do. It requires a high degree of commitment on the part of both tutors and teachers. Teachers have such busy and pressured lives, and are locked into their own country's pedagogical dynamic so completely, that they have little motivation or energy to experiment with such ideas. They are locked into a never ending cycle of 'reinventing the wheel' and doing the bidding of politicians who know little about education and are only too willing to sacrifice teacher experience and morale for their own short term political expediency. (I did admit to being 'CYNICAL.')  :mocking:
• In countries like the Philippines there are many people who want to set up private schools as ways to make money. It can be an ideal situation for concerned parents to be 'ripped off' by ignorant, 'negosio' orientated people, with no concern for providing quality education or value for money. Because parents are so concerned about the generally poor quality of schooling available to their offspring they are often only too willing to let themselves be exploited because they 'believe' what they are told by the school's owners. So called 'International Schools' and 'Montessori' schools are often examples of this. There probably are some really good 'Montessori' schools in the world but I very much doubt if you will find one in the Philippines!
• Sooner or later the pupils are going to have to try to fit into the admittedly imperfect world of Business-which you know about, Thomas-and the international requirement for widely recognised, and pretty educationally conventional, examinations. The longer a pupil is kept from integrating into this 'real world,' the more difficult it is for them to fit in later on. I'm not saying that it cannot be done- but I do not believe that in today's world it is possible for the vast majority of students.
• Chris McG.

[JJReyes]

Most countries like the Philippines have taken a pragmatic approach to education. They have the so called, "Elite" schools that requires a lot of resources to produce the future leadership of the nation. This is your inquiry method. For the masses, you have the education factories using the knowledge method. Do you want an adequate education in Cebu for your children or a superior one? Oftentimes it's a question of resources or money. If the parents are willing to devout their personal time to compliment school based learning, then it's no problem. Most accredited schools can provide adequate education, which is 50% of the equation. The parents provide the other 50%. 

 

One nice thing about the Philippines is the availability of inexpensive after school teachers. If they subscribe to the inquiry method, you have a substitute for the parents.

[Thomas]

indeed the extreme amount of commitment required on the part of the teachers.

Yes. Other type of teaching need other type of teachers  :)   

Some Swedish teachers from "my" town even went to that Danish school, paying the visit themselves, because they found it very interesting after TV had shown a documentary of it.

 

Many years ago I were substitute teacher between I ended one employment and I had appartment ready in a town I were going to move to. Then I "invented" an own style of teaching, something in between traditional and theese better education systems. My way suit to be done SHORT periods too.

In Sweden pupils are used to missbehave and be loud when they get substitute teachers. I "shocked" them by starting with put on music:

-Hi. Guess who is singing in two of theese 4 songs, were the first I said.

Then they had to be a bit quiet to hear the music..  :)   I wrote some alternatives e g the headmaster   :lol:   Most guess Lue Reed, who was at top lists back then, but it were I. No one of us can sing any good   :mocking:

By that I had started a thinking process by the students. They went loud for a while and I let them. When I noticed some of the students started to be tired of the noice, then I pop the thought:

-Can't we have more fun than being loud?

And because of the start, they understood they can with me as teacher.

Then I told them what we have to finnish before we can switch to something else than boring style of teaching. 

(When it was individual tasks as e g mathematics, then they could do anything QUIET they want as e g read comic books, After whole class tasks, we had e g class championships in 5-in-line or arm wrestling. =NOT any improvement of the study itself, but I recovered fast their MOTIVATION to study. Tests of homework I had similar to some popular TV quiz program.)

Because of the loudness in start, we were behind scedule for parallell classes in that school, but we catch up the first day allready, and following days we got MORE studies done than the others, altthough we spend 2 lessons in the end of the day doing something fun.

My students told them in the other classes, so they got jelous and asked their teachers if they could get same. Instead of copying my method geting motivaded students, the other teachers COMPLAINED at my students had more fun, although we did MORE studying than them...   :bash:

Such teaching requires enormous levels of resourcing and equipping of the school/institution.

Well. Yes, perhaps concerning TEACHERS work. They had to wor very hard in the STARTUP of each period, but they had probably less work than traditional teachers during the rest of the period, because the students worked much better by themselves.

But perhaps LESS COST, because the teachers produced most of the study material themselves, and then made as many copies as they needed. But their school had a well equiped library.

In most countries the majority of existing teachers, and those newly in training, are not equipped for such approaches.

Corect. Many of them don't have the skill to take care of biger kids groups UNDEPENDING of teaching method...   :mocking:    Just check how terrible most of them are concerning stoping bullying   :bash:

(I stop it fast by telling the only one it's allowed to bully is ME  ;)  Then they find it funny for a while trying to be naughty to me, but because I don't get angry, joke back with them - or against terrible bullies I just make fun of them, so they lose face in front of their class  =Same method as I used to stop bullying, when I were students myself.)

Most of the common teachers bother much about caps, thewinggum and such, INSTEAD of the important bullying, because they can't manage to handle the importat things any good...  :bash: 

Sooner or later the pupils are going to have to try to fit into the admittedly imperfect world of Business-which you know about

Yes. I had fun at a top graded civil economist, when he was new examed and thought he could everything, expected to get a boss job directly, but he hadn't a clue about REAL LIFE business   :hystery:   They had been taught some very simplified situations, which almost never happen IRL...

[relcarve25]

Most countries like the Philippines have taken a pragmatic approach to education. They have the so called, "Elite" schools that requires a lot of resources to produce the future leadership of the nation. This is your inquiry method. For the masses, you have the education factories using the knowledge method. Do you want an adequate education in Cebu for your children or a superior one? Oftentimes it's a question of resources or money. If the parents are willing to devout their personal time to compliment school based learning, then it's no problem. Most accredited schools can provide adequate education, which is 50% of the equation. The parents provide the other 50%. 

 

One nice thing about the Philippines is the availability of inexpensive after school teachers. If they subscribe to the inquiry method, you have a substitute for the parents.

 

   You seem to be assuming that your 'Elite' schools will normally adopt a different method of teaching which you call the 'Inquiry' technique. In an earlier post you define this approach as 'teaching students to think,' as opposed to a basic 'knowledge' based one which is mainly imparting information in a more formal way. I would not agree with this assumption which seems to imply that so called 'Elitist' schools are superior to those which the great majority of pupils have to go to because of the superior pedagogical approach of the former. I was sent to an Elite school in N. Ireland by my parents- I have also taught in Elite schools in England and Africa and have visited some such schools in the Philippines. Elite schools exist- and have always existed- because the  rich, powerful and influential people in a country do not want their offspring to mix any more than necessary with the rest of us 'plebs.' They want their children to mix with the children of people similar to themselves so that they become familiar with this level of society and are likely to develop friendships and contacts with people who can further their careers later on.

 

 From my personal experience very many of these children, privileged though they may be in many ways,do not have a monopoly on intelligence. Indeed many of them are pretty limited in their intellectual  potential. This is of lesser importance than other factors because of their parent's influence.It doesn't necessarily follow that they will be expected to problem solve or think logically any more than State School pupils. Most of the teachers in my Elite School experience did not use any markedly different approach to teaching than their State School peers. Both types of schools were a mixture of teachers who were 'chalk and talk' proponents, and those whom we would probably agree were better teachers because they tried to encourage students to analyse and think. Where 'Elite Schools' score highly is that they invariably have superior resources and facilities at their disposal (which you acknowledge)- together with the ability to 'cherry pick' who they think are the best teachers, for whatever reason.

 

   I am also surprised that you believe that parents are able to supplement the education of their children by filling the 50% ? deficit which you think many accredited schools will leave their students with. After nearly 40 years of teaching, and talking to 10's of thousands of parents from all backgrounds, I can truly say that I have met few who could, or would be willing to try to fill this deficit.

 

   As for the Philippine advantage that there are many suitable teachers seeking tutorial work who can do this job for the parents- I'm not so sure about that. Don't forget that the vast majority of these teachers were educated and trained in the 'Knowledge' based system you do not espouse. As Thomas has said it is very hard for such staff to change their ways. They work very hard, and for long hours, in their 'day jobs' and are unlikely to have the necessary time, energy or desire to change for a little extra salary. Those few that are already trained in the 'Inquiry' approach will hardly have the extra time to devote to tutoring.

Chris McG.