RedRag – Redemptive Education for Regenerative Agriculture, Thinking 2021 Digital Magazine

Awan ti nengneng uray awan adal. Walang bubo kahit hindi nakapag-aral. Nobody is dumb at all even if s/he did not attend any school. Each of us has a hidden talent that we have yet to discover!

That is the most astounding educational discovery I have read about, and I have been an Internet hound since 2000, when I became a work-from-home international consulting writer for the India-based ICRISAT under then-Director General and now PH Secretary of Agriculture William Dar.

I have a BS Agriculture degree major in Ag Edu from UP Los Baños 1965, with a Civil Service Professional license obtained the year before, 1964. I have always been a wide reader since high school, 1952, when I was Freshman studying in the high school department of Rizal Junior College (RJC) in my hometown Asingan, Pangasinan. Inadvertently in RJC, I discovered my talent for writing when sometime in 1959, our Tagalog teacher Constancia E Cruz of Manila held a writing contest to choose the Tagalog Editor for the up-and-coming RJC Newsletter – and I won! I won over a native Tagalog speaker. First ever Ilocano Tagalog Editor I suppose. 1 intelligence coming out!

To cut the story short, 50+ years later, the UP Los Baños Alumni Association (UPLBAA) honored me as “Outstanding Alumnus For Creative Writing” in 2012. At that time, ICRISAT had already published 4 books of mine based on my WFH articles published in my blog iCRiSAT Watch (Blogspot.com). Bless you, UPLBAA!

In this essay, I am introducing the pregnant idea of publishing a digital magazine, RedRag, a double-edged sword, as I hope that with RedRag, I will help sell 2 revolutionary ideas (neither mine originally):

(1)   Redemptive Education

(2)   Regenerative Agriculture

Where redemptive education refers to the Multiple Intelligences (MI) proclaimed to the whole world by Harvard psychology professor Howard Gardner in 1983. MI redeems us from the tyranny of the single intelligence quotient (IQ) proclaimed by psychologist William Stern in 1912[1].

Instead of a single IQ, we humans each has 9 MI; this list is from Cornerstone[2]:

1.      Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence (“Body Smart”)

2.      Existential Intelligence (“Life Smart”)

3.      Interpersonal Intelligence (“People Smart”)

4.      Intrapersonal Intelligence (“Self Smart”)

5.      Mathematical-Logical Intelligence (“Number/Reasoning Smart”)

6.      Musical Intelligence (“Music Smart”)

7.      Naturalist Intelligence (“Nature Smart”)

8.      Spatial Intelligence (“Image Smart”)

9.      Verbal-Linguistic Intelligence (“Word Smart”)

Of the 9 intelligences, we naturally incline to 1 intelligence, and which we have to develop for our own good. That is the brainy reason for any school to exist – and I want to sell that idea via the new magazine RedRag, which means “Redemptive Education for Regenerative Agriculture.”

With this, I’m hoping Pilar Habito will revive her Los Baños-based Cahbriba Alternative School that employed MI years ago.

RedRag will sell both concepts of Multiple Intelligences and Regenerative Agriculture digitally. I firmly believe that MI applied on RA all over the Philippines will bring prosperity to the lowliest village and help fight climate change archipelagically. That is why I am so bold.

Next, more on Regenerative Agriculture!@517

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[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient

[2]https://www.cornerstone.edu/blog-post/what-are-multiple-intelligences-and-how-do-they-affect-learning/