NOTE: the games portion of this essay can be purchased on here: https://mariabumby.itch.io/philogames; please feel free to use these games as jump off points in any educational and even purely leisurely settings.

PUBLISHED OCT 2024, opinions and observations around pedagogical developments are highly contextual and are my own. I understand that these can morph, change and be revealed to be true (or not) in time.

Preface

I think in general one of the things na sasabihin ko talaga sa bungad (say from the start( is that education is a social rank and class marker and that being able to consider texts, with academic depth requires time and energy which most folks don’t have when they are marginalized. This is why I do my best not only to make myself legible and simple (because wisdom is most powerful when shared), but to live out my own principles of inclusion. I hope you’d allow me to be so inviting and to speak towards not only my prof as a class requirement, but also a general audience.

DEAR READER,
Why did you go to school? Socialization and to figure out the way the world works? Who’s world? What kind of “work”?

Do you have time for wisdom? Have you ever read, or come to know something and you become exhausted? In an age of drinking from a fire hydrant when thirsty for (internet) information, how much of a privilege it is TO BE ABLE TO SITUATE ONESELF. TO HAVE TIME TO THINK FOR ONESELF. TO HEAR ONESELF. And as much as essays can become unpopular that is exactly the kind of gamed conversation I would like to play with you today. Allow this space to be a place for leisure and consideration, I hope one remembers that one’s mind is not only a crowd but can be a place of exploration and fun surprises. That knowledge is embedded and reflective and acted and wrestled upon and played with, with an ingenuity that has no need to be static.

Consider these as thought experiments like the philosophers like to name them, but as a game designer I also fully consider these as fully fledged games that you can play with 2-3 people. Best done with an open readiness to role play/occupy these philosophical energies and positions. Gather around you what you need to make this more fun ( a notepad to doodle in, snacks, lego, small figurines, whatever piques your interest and enables play…) I trust that you are exploring with yourself, and other people in a manner that you can trust. 

EXPERIMENT ONE: HEARTBREAK PHILOSOPHER

PLATO’S IDEALISM , ARISTOTLE’S REALISM, PRAGMATISM, EXISTENTIALISM & ROUSSEAU’S NATURALISM WALK INTO A CAVE-BAR. The BARTENDER has just gone through a harrowing experience of family loss/divorce/sudden debt/all of the above (write your own). CHOOSE A CHARACTER that one would role play into consoling this character. Have the group or a single player role play the bartender as deemed fit. 

PLATO CAN ALWAYS ASK…
– What is the essence of this experience?
– There is an highest ideal behind all this, is there not?
– Reconsider/discourse your thoughts, is there a truth your thinking has not yet penetrated or discovered?
– Are you attached to a changing physical matter, or would you prefer to ally oneself to an eternal, perfected thought? 

themes: classic and pioneer philosopher, to wake up and walk out of the cave of a puppet show of lives, highly effective for fans of the ideal/moral/mental not as effective for the material minutiae of an issue. 

ARISTOTLE CAN ALWAYS ASK…

• What is the objective reality? (parking emotions for a bit) 
• Can we observe what is actually happening?
• How you’re behaving makes rational-logical sense, how they’re behaving makes rational-logical sense, can we use deductive reasoning? 
• Face reality, do you see the truth now? 

themes: deduce the causality of observable phenomena, works out thoughts in the observable realm, highly effective for fans of the literal/causal/observable not as effective for the seemingly illogical/accidental/non-tangible 

PRAGMATISM CAN ALWAYS ASK…

• What would be the practical solution to all of this? 
• Based on our immediate experiences, what is the most doable? Useful? 
• What are your options, what can you do with your budget, money, emotions, time? 
• Not what is ideal, what would work for you right now*? (Now* is in a state of flux) 

themes: rubber meets the pavement, what is applicable and doable for the present context, highly effective for unrooted folks not as effective for folks who want to innovate, and be radically inspired in their next actions

EXISTENTIALISM CAN ALWAYS ASK…

• What choice do you have right now? You have free will to do what?
• Some things just … are (absurd/irrational/etc.), can you accept that? 
• What stress are you willing to live with? (that’s also a choice) 
• you are a unique existence, what use is your reason or comparison?

themes: acceptance of existing, letting go of needing rhyme or reason, highly effective for folks in the face of absurdity, not as effective for folks who prefer to have a grand harmony w how the universe works

ROUSSEAU CAN ALWAYS ASK…

• Do you feel like a caged artificial animal lately? Let’s re-wild, take a walk? Breathe? 
• What is your natural instinct telling you to do? What does your gut? 
• How can you get in touch with your inner world? 
• Your reactions are not natural, what if you don’t artificially “control/master” it? 

themes: “everything is good in the hands of nature, but everything degenerated in the hands of man”, you are nature and it is essentially good, highly effective for folks who need to ground into their bodies and resensitize into their internal realms, not as effective for folks who deeply distrust their nature/body-senses, or have an iron grip to their thoughts.

AFTER ROUNDS OF AIDING THE BARTENDER…

Have the bartender narrate which advice they feel aided them the most. As a group narrate a closing scene of how your characters might continue to relate to each other, and/or find resolution in each other’s stories. 

CLOSING

Which character did you want to play/did you like playing the most? Which characters do you think occupy the logic of the in real life people around you the most? Thank each other for playing and sharing the game together. 

———GAME BREAK 1

SA KABILANG BAKOD NG REALIDAD NG FILIPINO EDUCATION, KURO-KURO AT MGA THOUGHTS…

Just like in the game process, it’s evident that each philosophy is most effective in certain situations and are not as effective in others. Existentialism is a wonderful friend in the face of the most absurd freak occurrences, but if you are a person of deep faith and belief in an ideal spirit you might want to cling to a higher order-reason-nature.

The filipino cultures I move around in are mostly, idealist-naturalist. We are a very communal people, who tend to have strong faith cultures that want to believe in an interconnected of all things. Are shared definition of “kalooban” and intercontextual kapwa-embedded version of self is less about an individual and more a porous network of inter-being. I mention this because not only is localizing into Sikolohiyang Pilipino important, but also to contextualize any of the terms and philosophical languaging we might encounter. For example, it can be pragmatic, to appeal to filipino’s faithful, family oriented nature. It might not be the most tangible, mapanghahawakan na practical (math-wise) na next na gawin, pero within our culture, it’s actually a very hypertangible reliable thing that we do actually rely on and engage with. I feel like existentialism is most observable and most potent for the highly depressed or those going through deeply harrowing situations.

Just like in most philosophies we live in a syncretic nature of practice, that we can have a supernatural nature that aligns with idealism, but due to economic circumstances happily skid and weave alongside a healthy pragmatism and naturalism. Circling back to the game, much like how it emphasizes that certain philosophies are “hiyang/bagay/appropriate” with regards to certain people and situations, my recommendations for adapting this to philippine context is the same. Depending on the “canon” of the educational institution and it’s constituents, there would be an arc of internal growing culture of philosophy, and the appropriate scaffolds or even nutrients of other configurations of thought that would help it be robust, healthy, and well-integrated. Mending not only broken hearts, but also any other dire educational issue. 

EXPERIMENT TWO: GAME OF THE PRINCIPAL MOVEMENTS

This time lets consider a board game. You are a school principal with a limited amount of resources and you will consider how a generation of schools will evolve or last through generational changes should they stick to these movements. You are an inspiring leader who influences pedagogical movement and ideals convincingly. You can pick from four alignments and choose two look tags that can help you introduce your character further. 

! If you are inspired you can paint a scene of why your character established their school and/or if they even know any of the other character “players”.

ESSENTIALISM

YOU CAN ALWAYS…

• champion going back to basics, simplicity and legibility 
• espouse the 3RS, reading writing arithmetic (sometimes science and geography) as remaining essential
• facts and skills > art music PE, homemaking, vocational ed, no electives appeal to making wise teachers of authority who help you focus, and discern what really matters
• side move: emphasize present day facts over obsessing with classics/history

look/aesthetic: (choose 2) a severe haircut, an imposing stance, a crisp uniform that folks appeal to, an inspiring school logo/medal that feels reliable tried and tested, mute and cool tone colors, polished shoes, a well made ruler, a reliable pilot fountain pen and paper with no frills nor fuss, steady back, square corners, write your own image of essential severity… 

PERENNIALISM 

YOU CAN ALWAYS… 

• appeal to the great works, popular classics to get across a cultural story/value, emphasize on humanities, moral and religious training and the 
• talk about the past: why discard such Ancient Perennial wisdom? they surely touch universal truths? principles > facts
• be culturally conservative and popular to the general public, “make good citizens”/personal development
• champions technical and vocational learning 
• side move: this standardization and systemization helps discipline your mind amidst chaos

look/aesthetic: (choose 2) thomas aquinas energy, wise humanities professor who seems wise beyond their years, tweed or beautifully crafted cultural objects, a genial smile, a notebook filled with quotable phrases and stories you turn to during difficult times, minor literary/theatrical/musical study that fundamentally changed your view of the world, book well highlighted and maintained, write your own piece of eternal guidance …  

PROGRESSIVISM

YOU CAN ALWAYS… 

• teaching how to think not what to think, because the future is not perfectly knowable
• we must actively involve the students interests, and what is relevant, learning is an active verb that involved LIFE
• train students how to formulate good questions, and strategies to answer them 
• project and activity based learning is closer to real world learning and application, the student also gains more practical self-awareness
• side move: mention how numbed and “genius” students are left out in over standardization

look/aesthetic: (choose 2) yoda-esque guru who makes you do not (over)think, a wise scruffy uncle who teaches you about life while you were just kind of talking about your hobby (biking, butchering, mountaineering etc.), a work shed, table in the house with your hyper-fixation a unique place for your talent in the world, an open stage an open question an open hand to be yourself, a meticulous and private album, life-mentor-coach, write your own seat to the table… 

SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTIONISM

YOU CAN ALWAYS… 

• champion cultural pluralism, equity, and dreaming of the future together 
• talk about globalization and how students need to understand larger social, political orders and movements to be able to meaningfully situate oneself in such a complex world
• talk about current events, and align with current political movements
• rile up, involve, and inspire students to be politically active and not just be wage workers
• side move: mention how education is not a politically neutral cultural device 

look/aesthetic: (choose 2) zines, ALL CAPS MARKERS, boots, a too-cool-for-school haircut, public and active community forums, sit-ins, walk-outs, podcasts and interviews about local movements and heroes, a journalist’s mic, scribbled intersectional privilege, group chats about worker’s revolts, a future-dream forum spanning continents, salt and fire, willing to argue with you mock and smirk, willing to fight for you balls and legwork, write your own Ally…

GENERATIONAL EVENTS

Have the game facilitator/the whole group narrate the following major events in an order they prefer. They can embellish and modify these as they like: 

1 50 YEAR PRESSURE TO SPECIALIZE IN HYPER DIGITIZED, MACHINE DRIVEN WORLD, AI & QUANTUM COMPUTERS IS RAMPANT. Why is your school still relevant? 

2 SUDDEN APOCALYPSE DUE TO CLIMATE CRISIS!(choose: nuclear apocalypse, odd weather apocalypse, write your own) Why is your school still relevant?

3 THE STOCK MARKETS CRASHED, ADULTS SUDDENLY WANT TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL TO CREATE “NEW JOBS/MARKETS”: SCHOOL HEADMASTER IS INTERVIEWED BY THE HEAD NEWS STATION: WHAT WOULD YOU SAY? Why is your school still relevant?

4 ANGELS/ALIENS have descended from heaven! How does your school attract this new segment of the population? ALTERNATIVELY: SUDDEN MIGRATIONS IN/OUT OF YOUR NATION ARE HAPPENING DUE TO ISOLATED PANDEMIC, with rising political tensions, why is your school still relevant?

5 (write your own) 

MECHANICS
Players vote after every round who had the most compelling argument. (No one can vote for themselves). After four (or even more) rounds, the person with the most won arguments is crowned the most ETERNAL MOVEMENT of education for that play through. Make sure to enjoy narrating your scenes as a play group. 

CLOSING

Thank each other for playing and sharing the game together, mention a favorite argument/moment throughout the whole play thru. If there are newly evoked ideas reflections about being a teacher feel free to share to the group. 

———GAME BREAK 2

It may seem obvious but I have an affection towards progressivism and social re-constructionism. As someone who works with people outside of formal school settings, I find that the internal mechanics of coming to know oneself, think for oneself, and operate oneself is something that coaches and therapeutic alliance adjacent services end up satisfying instead of something that is expected to come from schools. 

I personally think that with the break-neck speed of change in contemporary society, the role of the “wise-elder”/teacher can be quite displaced, as a lot of my clientele can be “generational curse breakers”, the first to earn this kind of money, the first to be this political empowered as a woman in a different country, the first to speak against generations worth of grief, etc. and thus the previous markers of “Elder-mentors” become unstable to them because precedents to their experience simply do not exist. I feel like this is why I have a bias towards progressivism as it tends to be future-shock-proof (if done well, since holding a mentor energy is a heavy mantle to carry) as well as social re-constructionism, because as the name suggests, it already accepts that society as we know it is always splintering and being reconstructed. This complex manner of situating and then, building then becomes and essential labor students must do especially if they would want to be engaged instead of numbed to their existing realities. 

But let me be very practical for a moment: with the current socio-economic distribution of schools and students in the Philippines, most folks study to be employable or to be able to legally make money, easily.

In the latter part of this essay (game break 3) I propose what I think are pragmatic-progressivist solutions to philippine education, and let’s admit it, labor force.Just like the first game, as much as I have clear favorites, I still hold on to the belief/decision that a mix of philosophies and approaches are what is best for educational environments. I had a technical-pre-engineering style teacher (this is in Pisay-Main Campus) before who was very progressivist and yoda like in making us think of solutions for ourselves. I similiarly had a very perennialist and simultaneously a re-constructionist AP-History prof, who would let us design board games to describe cultural and national phenomena.

We talked about the tao te ching, yes but I also feel like being enabled to think and research about games, enabled within me a creative freedom that allowed me to adore game-thinking to a point that it has become one of my, professions. I feel like the wider one’s exposure the more one can be attuned to what method of thinking one is anemic in, or is well-fit to, like a sampler-diagnosis test rolled in one in your basic education experience. 

I would like to note however that historically, a lot of ruling regimes have used academia, and intellectual language and gatekeeping, to dissociate knowledge workers and decision makers from the working and making class. I’ve talked to global academics about how hard it was to espouse a culture of making and doing (eg: action research, facilitation) energy in academic conferences, since there is this historic “ick”/allergy towards doing things with our own hands. It definitely has this feeling of master-slave, thinker-doer dichotomy that is not a historically neutral experience. Why is it that when I say someone is smart, academically rigorous, it feels alien to think of them as a dancer, or also a popular radio speaker? Why this isolation of thought? Aren’t greek philosophers also pretty athletic? A lot of asian philosophies deal with folk and tactile arts, think of swordsmanship, dance and tea ceremony — why would our ways of thinking be dissociated from activity? From “projects”, “home economics”, lay society?

I feel like my attunement towards the progressivists is not just me liking “doing” things, but because I feel this wide gap between thought and our lived realities, the labor of our hands and I deeply detest it. I find it odd when my academic friends are surprised that I am a social dancer, their mental heavy lives surprised by the tactility and sensuality of one of my jobs. My usual reaction is “oh it’s actually a really cool way to think about gender dynamics, and even body politics” via dance, plus, it’s fun. Amongst my dance friends, my intellectual rigour and depth is new, since their natural allyship is more naturalistic and in sensing and interweaving with the implicit wisdom of the body.

When I argue for integration in education, I actually do mean a lived curriculum, as me an artist, getting a degree in art education, write and plays and makes art, alongside thought, belief, observation, application, health, inspiration, practicality, reverie. I feel like it’s the only way I can teach with any level of earnestness, with present and future students, and as my game suggests, to stand by a teaching life-way that I feel like can withstand crisis and the forward march and test of time. 

EXPERIMENT THREE: WALA KA SA PINANGGALINGAN KO! (you’ve got nothing from where I’m from) and other family sitcoms… 

FINALLY for our last game and thought experiment let’s watch five family sitcoms, all of the family members being educational psychological theorists who love honing their theories at home! Yes you are allowed to exaggerate and feel free to be quite comical, caricaturesque especially with la familia’s stereotypes. Remember this is a sitcom! as well as a game. The game provides scene starters that you can jump off from and narrate, you can also physical play act/make comics if you prefer, think of these as one act plays/one episode storyboard acting/ comedy sketch. Have fun!

Each family has question randomizers that will help you flesh out characters, move plot should you be stuck.

MEET THE SKINNERIST FAMILY
SCENE: Daddy is applying mice maze rewards/punishments to their baby to reward their beloved first child to say “dada” first. Mom creates her own “skinner” like hot/cold punishment to reprimand her husband. How does the mom modify her husband’s behavior? 

Question randomizers: 

What is daddy’s favorite food? What is a request that he’s always wanted from mommy?

Why is daddy so desperate for the baby to like him first? Why is mommy so good at manipulating daddy? Does anyone in the family react to the baby being treated like mice? How does the narrator feel, with being manipulated by our most base natures?

Based on appropriateness with audience: how is this kinky? can a human enjoy/want to be punished? 

Reflection questions: were your parents skinnerist? are you skinnerist/carrot and stick with convincing yourself to do things? how base/animal are your motives typically? 

PINOY LOCALIZER Ep: Chicken Lang Ang School

SCENE: A manok panabong is missing, mommy is trying to convince bunso to stay in school, what are incentives and punishments she tries to use? Typhoons, wifi disconnections, at kakulangan ng baon happens. Consider: a priest, a crush, a rival or Daddy convinces them to stay in school anyway. The narrator calls that benevolent helper, our lucky chicken. (Born year of the chicken) 

Reflection questions: how complex are our human motivations? what makes one, a convincing motivator? how does one discover unique personal motivators in students? 

MEET THE ERIKSON FAMILY

SCENE: They are raising their son named “EGO”. They tell them a montage of important battles little thought creatures you gain at important ages as you engage with SOCIETY. You meet INFERIORITY at age 11 at school. You meet WHO AM I CONFUSION, in teenager years with first row of relationships. And then you meet the twins INTIMACY and SOLITUDE in confusing 20s-30s as you come to define LOVE. Play-act how each of these thought-creature-allies look like.

Epilogue (long version) another mentor character talks about STAGNATION and empty nesting in your 40s, and DESPAIR in one’s old age. How do they describe them as friends ? Gatekeepers? Initiatory experiences? 

Randomizers: You can set the stage like Inside Out where inferiority, intimacy, solitude all pop up in an internal mindscape. You can also consider a cardcaptor sakura/pokemon style of mastering/capturing certain energies and collecting them all on certain stages. If you like high fantasy, you can also go Neil Gaiman-esque and have the creatures as ancient siblings who visit/bicker over who’s more important. This can also be very scott pilgrim format of defeat/date these 5 people, before finding god/reaching the end. 

PINOY LOCALIZER Ep: 

Describe a setting for each of the creature initiations. Eg: Mt Pulag for heartbreak, wanting to be a nerd/jock/wallflower/queer sa specific catholic school bago magprom. Feel free to celebrity cast every thought-creature like ghosts of future past to help you animate a memorable scene. 

MEET THE PIAGETIAN FAMILY

SCENE: This family loves a specific process, they also host a lot of children’s events. The episode feature the piagetians training a new baby sitter/in-law/foreigner what NOT to do/expect at certain developmental ages. The piagetians are quite specific! They notice that kids first needs to explore and sense the world around them, come to animate toys and assumes the world from their literal POV, learns logic and empathy, then learns abstract and higher order reasoning. Can the new baby sitter learn to handle this daycare before their new in-laws kick em out? 

Randomizer: Think daddy day care, and meet the in-laws rom coms. Feel free to write fish-out-of water familial dynamics and understanding that it is a whole new world, to empathise with the development of a child. 

PINOY LOCALIZER Ep:probi meets shala manila/relocates abroad. Allow the local main character to espouse their local beliefs and practices of the child at certain ages or things like “nung ka-age ko yan” eto yung pinagagawa ko to contrast a lived knowledge in comparison to piaget. 

MEET THE BRUNERIST, COGNITIVIST FAMILY

SCENE: This family doesn’t believe in age appropriate. They believe that their child can learn anything with proper cognitive support. They do this by first making their kid do a thing (play the piano), image a thing (draw a scale of notes like the hill/steps they go up and down in) before they grasp the symbolic concept of a scale of notes on a piano. This family is a bit “tiger-mom”-esque, and loves spiral-curriculuming just about anything that’s impressive to hack their child into early genius for their age competency. Play-act some brunerist musicians teaching Beethoven to a very small child, and how they become secure/insecure with their own learning styles/competencies in the process. 

PINOY LOCALIZER Ep:

A teacher tries to hack language learning for her very late in learning how to read delinquent students. What materials and activities would she make. What schema and references will her pasaway students know? Abangan! 

MEET THE BANDURA FAMILY
Neighbors of the Brunerist family, they similiarly don’t believe in age appropriate, but also believe that it’s social conditions that motivate their child to learn. This family is also nouveau rich, having come to sports winnings and social status in a sudden way.  They enroll their child to camps, and let them hang out with society’s “best” so their child naturally will emulate to be “successful” and be intrinsically motivated to learn. When their child returns after their 18th birthday, the parents find they barely know their child and have a hard time connecting with them. How will this Bandura family re-integrate their value of rich and success? of Family? 

Randomizer: Consider what the Bandura family considers a “desirable” education. Status? Wealth? Language? Consider also hidden knowledge/wisdom that may have been eclipsed due to these beliefs

PINOY LOCALIZER Ep: 

This would be the best episode to tackle migrant, diaspora x families and culture clashes. Make sure to centralize how a societal context enables one kind of learning to naturally occur “faster”, but also highlight other factors such as racism, internalized shame, language loss that also happens with this.

END OF SERIES

Reflect: What are your favorite scenes through the play through? Which scene/question lingers for you the most? Are there new questions, projects that are emerging in you after playing through these series? Remember to thank each other for playing out the game together. 

———GAME BREAK 3

I hope it’s really clear in my writing that I really believe that these lineage of thinkers is in some way a kind of familial inheritance. As much as it’s just truly enjoyable and funny to play-act through a skinnerist family I also do like extending these philosophies in a symbolic narrative lens to really interrogate and involve ourselves, how relatable is this? How involved am in this while also being able to cheekily observe myself being involved in this? The space of play-acting allows us to safely expand and imagine without needing to fully live out harm or risk. 

I also hope it’s clear via the localizers, that there are real world complex pressures to prefer to raise a child in this way or that and also to free associate, and re-story within ourselves where do we as a collective, experience heartbreak or navigate identity before we become “a graduating class”. It is! also a culture, it’s also geo-locational, adapted, held and constructed by the social units we move around in.

Most educational folks who have these people and theories memorized for the LET, but we tend to live out a philosophy that helps us survive first, in the first place. Eg: How to survive in an environment that rewards you for having a lot of certificates and CPD points instead of competency? (Well just fake attendance then!)  I really, do want to say that as much as these theories do have some very real applications in philippine educational realities, i feel like implicit cultures (eg: ateneo and jesuit concepts of MAGIS, UP and it’s tibak medyo mayabang legacy) have stronger observable effects in educational establishment. Again reiterating that the socio-economic income class of a school is a very large indicator of what would be the level of implicit thinking of it’s learners and coming from that it begs the question: where can you really operate from these educational principles?

I have a direct experience of this as I shared a reconstructionist concept (intersectional privelage) to my edpsyche class, later realizing that a lot of their problems, are public school teacher problems such as exhaustion, fatigue and non participation of students, lack of teacher support. These problems are situated in the intersectional privilege wheel, but in many ways some reconstructionist concepts are too complex when you’re still just trying to survive. I noticed that in my edpsyche class, that spoon-feeding and having catchy mnemonics was more engaging to my classmates because that’s what they had the energy for. Classmates can pull rank with age and gender. It was personally aggravating for me, but I also realized this is our working reality. As much as I would love to walk through how each educational philosophy affects philippine education, I feel like philippine realities (esp. material poverty) has the largest say and influence in any kind of actual implemented educational program. Acceptance with what is true is the first step to relating to real knowledge after all. 

Note, a lot of the great philosophies were developed in times of affluence, development and relative peace. In many ways they actually need to be readapted and re-contextualized to what our working reality is, kind of like using a foreign mac computer, with an adaptor plug for local electrical outlets.

Which kind of segways me into my next section about adaptations…

CRYSTAL BALL OF PEDAGOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS ^(TM) 

Before I get to some blue sky thinking I would love the following to be acknowledged: Most of the philippine socio-economic class are class C-D-E where educational aspirations are truly for employment and not social or any kind of nation building. 

I seriously, do not want to write from a place of internalised shame if we cite international test scores and ASEANS reviews when I am so adamant in establishing that citizens have a felt immediacy, knowledge of their local conditions, have worlds of practical knowledge and adaptations, and have ways of living that are often quite intuitive and so sensitive to the multiple realities that they straddle.  

Consider the SAD (standard american diet) and high obesity rates, and filipinos still having high rates of cooking homemade dishes. it is a lived knowledge instead of a measured/commercialized one and is yet a delightfully attractive lifestyle to the parisiener vacationing in ifugao, would relish in, to till and pound one’s rice as part of mountainous and picturesque rice culture.

I would not want to have any of my suggestions here offer a myopic view of the state of philippine education, and instead offer that yes, amidst industrialized measures we might be “lagging”, but in terms of culture we have a lot of holistic wisdom. In the following paragraphs I will offer proposals that would help alleviate the economical pains in line with not diminishing the local experiences, languages and knowhow that is housed in our lands.

(1) TIERED TESDA SUPPORT

I would recommend funding TESDA properly, and allowing TESDA to be market agile from metal work and plumbing to small business enterprises such as book-keeping. I would also encourage out of school youth to be market equipped (cooking line man, salon skills etc.) to truly diversify our student markets. I also recommend supporting small business courses, and micro-financing loans. This not only saves the funds of running a full k-12 to secondary education, but also deeply recognizes the importance of the skilled working class that aren’t typically for college/knowledge working graduates. I don’t believe that lower income classes are apathetic and disillusioned, they simply need more diverse avenues for social mobility. 

(2) EARLY CHILD MOTHER TONGUE LANGUAGE SUPPORT WIKI

A lot of natural knowledge is lost due to being lost in translation. I truly believe in the early child mother tongue language program and it just needs to be more creatively resourced. My proposition for this is to prioritize and subsidize curriculum material development in at least the 8 major languages in the Philippines and disseminate this freely, and accessibly online.

We can create a wikipedia style home page that hosts grades 1-12 curriculum, and allow folks to annotate and add resources in their native language. Assigned+vetted volunteer hosts will moderate and maintain the site, and teachers who need these in print can easily print these.  Encourage the general public to contribute talents into translation work and creating educational content for this, nesting the website with community made hyperlinks and materials. (Imagine how wikihow is a community based tutorial website, with pictures, and upvotes in usability, what if the entire curriculum can have rich media links just like this? with translations).

For roll out process, allow this to be done on three main subjects first and gradually do this for all remaining subjects. This is a programming, computer engineering and hosting issue rather than re-inventing a wheel issue. Crowd-sourced free-media sites, social media forum sites, TED talks are all contemporary models of resource annotating, translating and building for the digital age. Some legendary website forum spaces (itch.io) have been made by singular developers who simply wanted to host a site by their own rules and something they run pro-bono. Communal site development can be more accessible than one thinks and is just a competency issue.

Current deped should be more earnest about early child mother tongue programs, and to invest in modern solutions that allow modules to be translated as soon as possible and accessed as conveniently as possible. For teachers with less internet access, internet load programs to access this wiki-style site resource would still be more efficient compared to trucking static books over various mountains.

(3) SUBSIDIZE EDUCATIONAL MEDIA:TV~SOCMED PROGRAMS

A lot of lower income families learned about live-streaming over the course of the pandemic. they learned to attend funerals over a facebook live and even care for sibling thru a video screen as they labor often away-from-family work. This is an incredible opportunity.

Subsidizing or simply publicly endorsing online platforms for learning (wether it’s for an online university, a specialized reading catch up program-module, or even online bible studies) is a unique post-pandemic opportunity for informal places of educational attainment becomes a golden opportunity.

Imagine celebrities, talking about reading programs for behind kids on a noon-time show, or highlighting kids who have finished night-schooling online. To have creative solutions to the under-educated population is not just a material issue but also a communication/marketing issue. Where is the pride in learning, sa pagututuro? sa pagshashare ng bagong nalaman? The way grab drivers naturally informally “unionize” on facebook groups is powerful, and filipinos being so social-media adept, and truly social creatures can be leveraged to our advantage when we make education a truly “Public” activity. And a responsibility, and attractive thing that everyone can meaningfully participate in. 

To some extent this is already informally happening, with a lot of workshop formats being marketed online, and some specialized courses being already offered from twitter to discord. (For eg: during the hallyu wave of K-pop and K-dramas there are a lot of korean language teachers who would set up zoom classes online for those who want to learn korean, even without university credits. it’s seen as a leisure activity, and a skills-building activity should they want to work in marketing to korean related events). Taking classes online has been so deeply normalized post-pandemic even if virtual accessibility is not always the most consistent. 

I’m also thinking of retired professionals who can be less engaged in community work be engaged in these “online bible study activities” and socialization-learning places. If this public sphere is penetrated for eg by visiting theologians, collaborating with active artists and business people, our local environs would not only have more places to share resources, but also would have more reason to do so because they would actually KNOW who they are talking to because there is a baseline higher community engagement. 

Notice I don’t suggest an overarching program for online courses but instead a change of attitude with regards to who are considered the students, teachers, where are the “classrooms” and what is considered to be “education” to simply broaden. The more diversified the knowledge exchange, the knowledge base, the ways to access this knowledge, the more robust and holistic our culture of education becomes. Suddenly we feel open to accessing foreign consultants, suddenly we don’t mind packaging educational pamphlets via messenger group chats, suddenly we don’t underestimate retired housewives in their teaching capacities and other untapped societal engagement. Education is a group assignment, and if there is to be more respect, depth, and emergent best practice from it, we need more folks to be able to meaningfully engage with it. I’m not even attached to this movement/moment to come from the government or a TV program, I would be happy if this becomes a popular message amongst rotary folk, or just a lot of passionate facebook/discord admins. I feel like there is a real joy in teaching and learning, I hope more and more folks find ways to participate in it.

SIDE NOTE: I believe NSTP should fully replace ROTC or at least have more robust hours and requirements as I feel like national volunteering to learn how to teach and be exposed to lower income establishments is essential and formative to our youth. 

——————

NOW! Kindly hold that thought about the entire society participating in education. I would love to expound on that singular idea and why I think it will gain legs. 

BLUE SKIES THINKING…

UNO MAS

ACCESSIBILITY OR REMOTE KNOWLEDGE, NON-FORMALIZED KNOWLEDGE, EDUTAINMENT CROSS-CONTENT

Other than a lot of people being forced to do business and leisure online during the lockdowns, another curious thing happened: A lot of entertainment became competitive by being educational.

Forgive me but I’ll be quite thorough in my examples here because I feel this is an important development. The most popular reel formats condense hacks, tutorials and information. Information dense media (video, audio, text, hyper text) are all simultaneously overlaid into singular digestible post that delivers an idea with as much accessibility and wit as possible. A lot of businesses and independent creators are pressured to create communities around sharing/serving the most, by giving free webinars, limited access to libraries of content, and simply doing tutorial/QnA videos. Even youtube essayists, and podcasters are going through a trend of being encouraged to do two to even eight hour long essays and explainers that accompany people in dull jobs or quarantine, to simulate a wise friend or streamer that would teach you helpful things in an entertaining but clear and illuminating way. As someone who like teaching and performance, I not only find this phenomena groundbreaking, liberating and entertaining, but also wildly overwhelming. 

Suddenly introverts need to be their own film crew, and folks who usually gate keep knowledge need to trust the onslaught of the internet to not misinterpret or misrepresent cultures that you are sharing. I cannot emphasize how much of a cultural shift this is: gaga movement classes that you would have to travel to Europe to attend to became free due to the pressure of the pandemic. Such accessibility is unprecedented and a lot of the barriers to entry have simply toppled due to economic pressure. The thing is, this is the kind of entertainment landscape that teachers have to co-exist with in the current market. Every indian youtube video explainer, every twitter meme that simplifies ancient philosophy. There is a very real pressure for formalized, and usually older teachers to be more tech savvy, digitally accessible/convenient, and to be more entertaining. But what’s interesting is that suddenly the business market is interested in… education! 

Take online platform “Masterclass” which takes known leaders in selected fields to present a short online participatory course on their fields, with assistance of a well-produced set of videos. Neil Gaiman is a globally popular author, fantasy writer, but also a consistent university writing professor. Suddenly his creative writing classes are accessible. Suddenly everyone is trying to learn how to facilitate and teach effective classes, training trainers, in whatever fields they’re in. This is very good news for niche content skill sets like music production, or even things like cross comparative linguistic studies. There are more diverse players/students/teachers in the market, and suddenly your niche is a global possible interest and market. Apps like bandcamp pay influencers to teach other people how to use the app, and essentially how to do music composition from your phone! Music composition is a very real job, and music professors similiarly release musical breakdowns on reels just as much as active music critics. 

This also heightens a participatory/collaborative expectation from our digital environments. folks are encouraged to comment, and discuss in social platforms for more engagements. Philosophytube and Contrapoints are famous youtube philosophy essayists with some of the most thoughtful and incisive comment sections. People learn to break down and “instruct” succinctly online and share more and more of their work, in an entertaining way if you want to maintain/survive in an online community. Some of the sharpest thinkers i know were “trained” on twitter since it can be the most brutal teacher in how one offer’s position, opinions and just words. 

The internet is a highly participative, living, and dynamic place for knowledge. It is a very gigantic and present influence to everyone, especially younger people and I feel that if we emphasize how education can be (1) participatory (2) accessible (via entertainment or platform) then increased internet involvement would actually be a good step towards a global consciousness that knows how to live and learn alongside each other. A boon for equity! Hopefully. 

DOS MAS

Talking about Global Consciousness, I really feel like with the increase in geopolitical interdependence, the higher rates of cultural exchange there will be an incoming generation that simply has more experience and maturity in a more vastly interdependent/interconnected world. The mental-health crisises of the global north, developmental-justice criseses of the global south can be the perfect boiling point that corners people into mutual cooperation and realization of needing each other. 

Maybe! leaps in quantum computing and science will have us in a more lived admission about the living mystery, as more computation and industrialization also corners us into questioning what makes us human? or that darned thing called spirituality. This might sound idealist, but I really do imagine gen z teachers being more effortlessly global as they were raised on the soup of so much glocal references, that they cannot help but be inundated by truly global perspectives and information. If there is to be a deeply rooted global consciousness, then that is also something I think we’d have to be more intentional about cultivating.

TRES YES

WHAT NOW HAPPENS TO OUR BELOVED AND BEAUTIFUL INSTITUTIONS?
Change is already happening: heightened collaboration, agility, open forum and community building are all existing phenomena. (eg: the facebook group for after this philo class). Batches and specific groups have robust group chats where there is germination and exchange of historical, present and future data. 

There’s also a new generation of teachers, but also new iteration of teachers in these current institutions. Change can be a pain, (just see pandemic and forced zoom class lockdown for public schools), but one senses and rides with the times masterfully and holds paradoxically the new and the eternal. The way pedagogy is done will change, it is as natural as the wind. Like the zen koan of one hand clapping, we are both ancient and innocent. Similiar to the previous canon, a son having the likeness of your father a sure echo, but also never the same foot-person-thing when you step into an ever changing river. Since change and pressures are inevitable, I feel it becomes a more important philosophical inquiry on what are our attitudes and behaviours towards very present changes, and how are we most effective in living out our values with the demands of the times? 

NOTE: Geopolitically speaking, governments have has broad positioning to attract certain markets. eg china invests in manufacturing educated trained labor force to keep it’s nation and currency globally competitive. The philippines has an OFW export in hospital and hospitality industries, and the quality of rights in these institutions become a central discussion in any global conference with a madaldal and often witty pinoy. When a student becomes aware of their oppression within greater systems, is the information empowering or dehumanizing? Is it the teacher? the facilitator? or the student that decides? How does one position a national consciousness and learning configuration towards self-belief, natural realizations, if not also communal empowerment? 

Rather than etching into stones any kind of prediction I want to offer questions that will remain relevant:  What is the quality and caliber of our questions? State of our thinking, from where does our wisdom emerge? For how do we dream of our societies and how it evolves and considers learning. Who do you include in your concern? Can we expand ever wider and wider circles do we become more competent and thorough in our care? 

Rather than eulogize the standards of what philippine educational system is right now (re: underfunded, botched statistics, high public school teacher to student ratio etc) I also feel like it’s personally tiring to wallow in self-pity and not come from a creative state. As someone who is speciallizing in art education, this state/philosophy of creativity and inspired action is something I hope my essay espouses as it is empathetic towards the plight and lack of socio-economic mobility of a lot of lower income students and what education CAN mean for them. 

CLOSING IDEA

My simple suggestion then becomes at what part of this text/essay did something compel a very real and profound thought? Do not take your thinking faculties lightly and allow it to permeate down into your body and being — how does it change your life? your way of being? Do you feel more open? Riveted? Maybe even angry? Do you give yourself time to feel the shape of one’s thought? Sa ating kinalolooban? If that pause be the only process that happens, and only convincing proposition (in solving “education criseses”) that one takes from this essay, I would still consider my writing endevours successful. 

Thank you for your life (which you involve in reading) and your time.

Should the reader use any of the games/thought experiments from this essay feel free to do so, I would love to hear about your encounters with the games or just teachers in general. 

PS: I would like to commend sir’s process of allowing us to really speak our mind at length. and this has to be my favorite class if it were not just conducted so late at night (a time where my mind is usually more sleepy). A personal and deep thanks to be allowed to really write, summate, and get quite creative in the contours of how I perceive the philosophical ideas and curriculum presented in my being, in my minds.

x

Maria