Government and academic freedom

Last Jan. 30, the South China Morning Post published an article on the ongoing “ideological campaign” of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Xi wants schools to stop using imported textbooks and teachers to stop teaching anything but the “political, legal and moral bottom line.” That means, as Education Minister Yuan Guiren spelled it out in a gathering on Jan. 29, Chinese students should study only Marxism and Chinese socialism.

In the news article, Peking University law professor He Weifang is quoted as saying that “Yuan’s remarks amounted to administrative interference in academic freedom.” Yunnan University journalism professor Guo Jianbin is quoted as saying that “Minister Yuan should learn that criticism is the right of being an intellectual.”

That is a clear example of the conflict between what a government wants and what universities want.

Just as clear is a case reported by CNN last Sept. 26.

The Jefferson County School Board in Denver wanted to “review the Advanced Placement curriculum for US history classes to ensure that teaching materials present positive aspects of US history and its heritage.” Among the topics that the Board wanted to ban from being mentioned in classrooms and in textbooks were slavery and the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan.

Whether it is communist or democratic, a government routinely tries to censor textbooks and ideas.

This is partly why the Modern Language Association keeps warning its 30,000 members in 100 countries about continuing attempts all over the world to curtail both institutional and individual academic freedoms.

The MLA mentions the “intrusive processes of standardization.” This brings us to the situation in our own country. Is the Philippine government, through the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), trying to violate the academic freedom of our Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and their faculty members?

Let us look closely at a recent set of “Policies, Standards, and Guidelines” (PSG) issued by CHED. This is CHED Memorandum Order (CMO) No. 2, series of 2014, setting the minimum standards for the program called Bachelor of Science in Entertainment and Multimedia Computing (BS EMC).

The Introduction (Article 1, Section 1) of the CMO starts with the “shift to learning competency-based standards / outcomes-based education” that CHED has been pushing for some time. It immediately states, however, that “this PSG provides ample space for HEIs to innovate in the curriculum in line with the assessment of how best to achieve learning outcomes in their particular contexts and their respective missions.”

It is clear from this CMO, as well as in other CMOs, that CHED is very careful not to violate the constitutional provision on academic freedom.

Again and again, this CMO reminds HEIs that they have academic freedom. The curriculum itself, says Article 3, Section 3, is a “sample curriculum map.” The course syllabi are described as “sample course syllabi.” Note the word “sample.” The curriculum and the syllabi are not prescribed; they are merely samples to give HEIs ideas on how to proceed.

In Article 3, Section 4, the CMO explicitly states that “the HEIs are allowed to design curricula suited to their own contexts and missions provided that they can demonstrate that the same leads to the attainment of the required minimum set of outcomes, albeit by a different route. In the same vein, they have latitude in terms of curriculum delivery and in terms of specification and deployment of human and physical resources as long as they can show that the attainment of the program outcomes and satisfaction of program educational objectives can be assured by the alternative means they propose.”

There are many things that can be said against Outcomes-Based Education (OBE), but one of the good things about it is that it frees HEIs from having to follow prescribed curriculums and syllabi. The important element is the outcome, not the inputs (which a curriculum and a syllabi are).

Let us take a hypothetical and extreme example. CHED requires college teachers to have at least a college degree (that is an input). Let us suppose that Melvyn Morris, the inventor of Candy Crush Saga, wants to teach game development in a Philippine HEI. Candy Crush Saga was the most downloaded free app and the top revenue-grossing app in 2013.

Morris was a school dropout. According to what most HEIs understand, Morris is not qualified to teach game development in a Philippine HEI.

The Supreme Court, however, has explicitly included the right to determine “who may teach” in the definition of institutional academic freedom as envisioned by our Constitution. The CMO acknowledges this constitutional provision by giving HEIs “latitude” in “deployment of human resources.”

In other words, the Philippine HEI can hire Morris even if he has no academic degree. What is important is whether the students of Morris can create billion dollar-earning games such as Candy Crush Saga (outcome), not how long Morris stayed in school (input).

Many, if not most, HEIs misunderstand what CHED really wants. Unfortunately, many, if not most, of CHED’s lower-level officials also misunderstand the CMOs (not the CHED Commissioners, who know what they promulgated).

This brings me to the disconnect between what is written on paper and what lower-level CHED officials demand of HEIs. (To be continued)