Education that empowers

This is a timely topic to ponder upon now that classes have officially started and schools are now full with students either eager or not eager to return to learn.

That is the crucial difference between education that empowers and just plain routine education.

The latter type of education is interested to see the students through every level, with emphasis on the students’ earning credits and getting passing grades, and with a diploma to show off for one’s education at the end.

The first type, the education that empowers, of course, sees the importance of students progressing from one grade, from one level to the next. However, the focus of such empowering type of education is learning, knowing , discerning what are most important for one to achieve and live a fulfilled and meaningful life and that includes living one’s life in the service of others.

Which type of education is being taught in our schools?

One can best answer that by looking at one’s own experience. Or one can look at what happens to the graduates after they leave school. Are our graduates able to get satisfying jobs for themselves? Are they sharing what they learned with other Filipinos?

The answer, sadly, is the harsh reality that despite college education, not all graduates are able to find jobs. Those who do have jobs that are not at all happy with their work that is often unrelated to what they studied for previously. The pay also is far from satisfactory. Also, most of the work they do are detached from serving the more needy Filipinos in their midst.

Much has been written about what type of education this country or this world needs. There has been a movement, initiated by the United Nations, to promote Education for Sustainable Development ( ESD). This type of education emphasizes the protection and conservation of Mother Nature by people who are also taught how to live fulfilled lives as human beings.

This type of education envisions everyone to know what resources they have within and around them and to learn how they can avail of these resources to meet their basic needs effectively but not in a destructive, but rather in a sustainable fashion.

Up in forest areas, for example, ESD promotes the protection of the forests and its resources by allowing the forest residents to recognize what they have, and to be able to learn how to use what available resources they have around them for their food, health, clothing, housing and other needs. ESD matches the type of education to the needs of people and nature within their particular unique environments.

In fishing and coastal areas, for example, ESD highlights the important role of the seas, of other water resources for the life of the fishing community residents and emphasizes their role in preserving their very vital environment not only for their own survival but for the survival of others, including water creatures, not only in the Philippines but all throughout the world.

In urban areas, ESD allows for the students to see their urban environment very clearly so that their learning can be used to improve their environment, especially where waste that results from a consumptive, materialist culture can be effectively managed.

ESD is sensitive to the physical and social environment of the learners as it also encourages the learners to preserve and protect the best of their natural environment with their learned skills and insights. That way, ESD preserves not only nature but people and communities as well, including the whole global eco-system. ESD is protective of people and nature.

As school opens once again, will our students learn that which they will need to live fuller, meaningful lives protective of their natural environment? Or will our students just be handed down the same routine type of education that emphasizes grades and units more than effective learning or ESD?

Schools should never be just formal physical structures or centers where students who pay their tuition fees earn grades and receive diplomas. Schools should be what they are: Learning spaces where the students can realize how wide, wonderful, and generous their natural world is and that they have to learn to do their share to continue such a beautiful God-given world and to live, each and every day, in peace and prosperity with others.

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