The real function of education

Originally published in Philippine Star, December 18, 2011. Click here for original article

Last Friday, my six-year-old son, Mike, cried at his school’s Christmas presentation. There was a raffle and he, unfortunately, didn’t win any prize. Since he was one of the kids assisting in the school’s raffle — drawing the names for the prizes, and reading them — he was on stage and essentially the whole school saw his tears.

Of course, his teachers tried to calm him but his disappointment was nonetheless obvious. So I went near the stage, called Mike, and carried him to a corner and basically told him that he shouldn’t be sad for not getting a prize. The grand raffle prize was an iPad 2 and while I was consoling Mike, some people in the audience started chanting, good-naturedly, “iPad, iPad!” It was meant as a joke and also perhaps a way to help cheer up my disappointed son. Being a small, closely-knit school community, they were aware of Mike and his sensitive disposition and they knew that after a little bit of soothing from his mom and dad, he would be his usual smiling, talkative, and happy self again.

This is one of the reasons that I appreciate Mike’s school, ICY or the “Integrated Center for the Young,” which is located in Quezon City. It is, to my mind, a truly caring and nurturing school and the size — no high school, no college and perhaps 20 students per class or grade level — engenders a feeling of closeness among teachers, students, and parents. A sensitive, thoughtful child like Mike can easily get lost in a big school. I’m sure schools with large populations also try to create an atmosphere of familiarity; however, the sheer size of those schools, particularly those appended or integrated into equally large and established universities undermines and eats into the sense of community.

And community, when raising children, or at the very least a sense or semblance of it, is essential. They say it takes a village to raise a child but the problem is that our villages are no longer the friendly and intimate communities that they were 30 years ago. In fact, many people, like my family and I during the workweek (we stay in Mandaluyong during the week and spend weekends in Quezon City), live in condominiums, which are places not exactly known for a sense of deep community. Truth be told, many people like condominiums precisely because they don’t have to interact or even get to know their neighbors. I’ll accept that kind of thinking for adults but children deserve and need interaction within a stable and nurturing community. The interaction — having playmates, friends, meeting other parents, etc. — teaches tolerance, broadens experiences, and simply provides a richer life for children. In the end, a child raised within such an environment will grow up being better grounded and with more life-skills and emotional intelligence. So if we cannot find this in our villages or high-rises, then at least our schools should provide for this sense of being part of a community.

Another thing that I appreciate at ICY is that it is an integrated school, meaning that children with special needs, such as autism, are integrated and made part of a class with the so-called “normal” children.

My eldest son, Santi, who is nine, has autism and part of the reason that we chose ICY was for its integrated program. Mike’s experience with his kuya Santi and his classmates with special needs appears, to my mind, to have made him a kinder and gentler child, someone who is comfortable with people who may be a little different; in short, Mike is growing up to be a very tolerant human being. Additionally, I notice that in ICY there are scholars, students who because of economic concerns would ordinarily be unable to study at the school. So the integration isn’t merely based on learning ability but also on economic terms. I definitely believe it is good for Mike’s development to spend time and grow up with people from all kinds of social and economic backgrounds.

An additional reason why I appreciate ICY is that the smallness of the school engenders a sense of individuality with the students. Individuality both in the sense that the student isn’t a mere number or statistic but a real human being with a specific temperament, personality, and identity but also in the sense that the child doesn’t have to be cookie-cutter perfect - that he can be quirky, even weird but nonetheless accepted. Smaller schools, with the proper guidance from administrators and teachers, may be better suited to tolerate the idiosyncrasies of individuals. Bigger schools may not have the staff — or even the proper inclination — to deal with quirks of some students.

So why am I ruminating on the value of community in the education of my sons? Well it is because I have been grappling with the issue of what is the real purpose of education. The modern trend views education as the transmission of skills, particularly technical ones, to get the student ready for a world that is highly immersed and dependent on technology. Thus, there is a push towards the sciences and the technical vocations and there is a lessening of emphasis on the arts and humanities.

In fact, fairly recently, a Harvard University study showed that the quality or level of math skills of a country’s studentry has a correlation with economic growth. Simply, that nations where students are better at math, when compared with other countries, had higher rates of economic growth. Perhaps this is a justification for the push in education towards science and technology.

This may all seem a bit esoteric so let me concretize — the reason I’m pondering the modern trend of education and its purpose is because there are some people, well-meaning family members and friends, encouraging me to send Mike to a “big” school. The argument is that since Mike is a precocious and intelligent child — he was offered to be accelerated to another grade level but we declined — then his skills would be better developed in a school with better facilities and more competition from equally bright students. Admittedly, part of my hesitation is that I don’t want to split up my kids but these encouraging me to send Mike to a big school say that my desire to see my children go to the same school should not overshadow or take precedence over the potential benefit to Mike’s going to a bigger, more competitive, and perhaps technologically and facility-wise better school.

Honestly, there is some sense in the argument for sending Mike to a big school but my purpose for sending him to ICY with Santi isn’t merely because I don’t want to separate them but because i have a profoundly different view of the purpose of education and because I value the sense of community and individuality in ICY.

For me, education is not the mere transmission of skills and techniques to students — heck, we can do that to computers and artificial intelligence machines — instead, education refers to a person’s total human development. I’m the dean of the College of Law in Liceo University in Cagayan de Oro and I appreciate the fact that Liceo University has the same vision of education as I do. Schools and universities aren’t meant merely to churn out the most technically skilled graduates that they can. Rather, they should develop the best human beings that they can.

Too touchy-feely for you? I’ll accept that, but for me education must be predicated on the development of the whole person, which means not only teaching requisite skills and basic abilities but also involving and including value-formation and instilling sense of citizenship and civic-mindedness. I don’t doubt that my view of education may have little currency in the pragmatic, technologically driven, and postmodern world. But I stand by it nonetheless and it is the foundation of the way I raise my children. Actually, it is because I see education in this light that my wife and i have deferred our decision to send Mike to a bigger school. For now, he is happy and thriving at ICY and he is growing up, to my family’s delight, to be a kind, sensitive, and thoughtful person.