Redefining Education

Post date: Jul 4, 2018 1:05:12 AM

By: May D. Vinzon

Teacher III, COBNHS

It all started with a challenge.

Everywhere in the academe you go, there is always a reverberating echo of the “21^st Century Learning” not because it is a trend to follow but a goal to achieve. A vision, it is.

Being tagged as one of the seemingly less progressive countries is a slap to every Filipino’s face and our reflexes tell us to prove it wrong, and so our response is the implementation of the new cycle of basic education.

A lot has changed in the Philippine Education System since we started embracing the K to 12 Curriculum. We have been introduced to new terminologies like “student-centeredness”, “learning competencies”, and “digital natives” – the terms which did not exist before in the context of education. Nevertheless, we have learned how to unpack these and have started to transform our ambition to realization.

21st century is an era of innovations, technology, and never-ending curiosity. It is an age when ignorance of using computers is a crime. It calls for the acquisition of higher level of competencies and applying them to real-life situations.

With this change come the adjustments educators and learners need to face. The range of abilities has evolved from three Rs: (1) reading; (2) writing; and (3) arithmetic to seven Cs: (1) Critical Thinking; (2) Collaboration; (3) Creativity; (4) Communication; (5) Cross-Cultural Understanding; (6) Computer Literacy; and (7) Career and Life-long Learning. Classroom learning, nowadays, goes beyond digesting information, rather, it extends to making meaning and practical applications of such. All of these, when achieved, guarantee the country of global learners ready to face and fulfill the demands of life.

Education is something that never ceases to change. It just improves. And this is something we should continue working on. What we set as vision in 2020 may not be the same as we would in the next ten years. But one thing is for sure – education is a continuum of experiences from cradle to career.