PH K-12 Good For Critical Thinking, Bad For Creative Thinking & Farming!

MANILA: I am a certified high school teacher, a Civil Service Professional by passing the very first Teacher's Exam in 1964 with a grade of 80.6%. That takes care of the critical thinking part – you cannot study and pass any exam without using mostly or 100% critical thinking. (2nd image from iStock, istockphoto.com)

But I am much, much more a creative writer, starting publicly when I became a copywriter for Pacifica Publicity Bureau in 1974, continuing in 1975 when I joined the Forest Research Institute, FORI, based at the campus of UP Los Baños, and became one after the other the founder and Editor in Chief of the monthly newsletter Canopy, quarterly technical journal Sylvatrop, and quarterly color magazine Habitat.

In 2005, I began blogging, and with unusual zeal with digital technology and desire to share knowledge from science and folk wisdom, I have since published in my more than 100 blogs more than 6,000,000 words (from about 6,000 long essays of an average of at least 1,000 words each), and became the world's most creative writer online, a claim I have made that remains unchallenged since 6 years ago.

The Department of Education, DepEd, has its K-12 Curriculum, which Education Secretary Leonor Briones describes thus ("DepEd's Digital Rise Has Begun," Facebook, facebook.com):

The K to 12 Curriculum revolves around four core skills that are needed in the modern world: Life and Career Skills; Effective and Communication Skills; Learning and Innovation Skills; and finally Information, Media, and Technology Skills.

The Digital Rise is to support the implementation of the fourth group of skills, more commonly referred to as information, communication, and technology, ICT. Says Secretary Briones:

The delivery of ICT subjects (is) designed to build up the competencies of our children. These include Productivity Tools which are taught as early as Grades 4-6, Basic Programming taught in Grade 7, Multimedia Skills taught in Grades 8-10, and Vocational Courses in ICT, such as computer servicing and call center services, that are taught in Grades 11-12.

So, yes, granting the best results, DepEd will be graduating high schoolers that can handle modern media with more familiarity or some finesse. With my head focused on critical thinking and my heart on creative thinking, I can see clearly that DepEd is training would-be doctors, engineers, lawyers, mathematicians etc – but zero farmers. Digital Rise encourages the use of modern media, but not the use of the medium called the soil, and how to make it productive for society.

In fact, this tendency of DepEd to favor modern media is just a continuation of 100 years of American education in the Philippines, where only in state colleges and universities in the Philippines is the cultivation of the soil encouraged! I love American English but.

I am thinking a radical thought about farming – from high school, treat and teach it as a creative initiative and not simply a collection of logical, mechanical moves, then you encourage multiple kinds of productivity and profitability. Then the poor we would not always have with us!@517