Is there really a sense of Idealism in Philippine Education nowadays?

      After having read the chapter on Idealism, I could personally define Idealism as the philosophy or belief wherein the nature of humans and the environment is naturally, constantly and permanently good, true and beautiful.

        With this, I could now talk more about how I think Idealism influences Philippine education as of today. I could raise 3 points to explain further on this matter. First is that, if we look into Philippine education through the epistemological sense, it is evident that the seeking of knowledge is not done solely through "books" but through recognition and introspection done by the students themselves. What I mean by this is, Philippine education has now moved from the traditional perspective (the use of books purely for lectures) to that of which students can reminisce or have time to think about their ownselves, their insights, in relation to their learning. I have personally experienced this at the school where I'm currently employed at. Yes, we do use books because that is where we get the core of our lessons, but we do not confine the students on just these books. We provide them with experiences wherein they can reflect and have some introspection on their knowledge about a certain topic. We give students opportunities to think more rather than just feeding them whatever is in the book through a silver spoon.

   

        Second, if we look into the values of Philippine education today, Idealism has been of great effect to it's value system as well. If we view things through the axiological sense, values are the imitation of the good, and are described as absolute, eternal, unchanging and universal. Much like in the setting of Philippine education now, values are still given much importance. Even in the public schools, teachers incorporate the teaching of values in their lesson proper. Values which were considered as "good" before, are still the ones being taught now, for values are constant and perennial, withstanding time even as cultures and people change. With the saying that "values are taught and caught", I could really say that the philosophy of Idealism has a very strong influence on this. As mentioned in the chapter tackling about Idealism, the teacher is viewed as the model or exemplar who is worthy of imitation by his/her students. I could say that this is very evident in all schools in the Philippine setting, for I believe that educators here in the Philippines do not only teach lessons through the books, but they also teach through themselves. They say that ourselves are our best and most efficient "instructional materials" when we teach to our students. Good attitude, behavior and ofcourse, value systems are taught best through example and modelling.

           Last but not the least, I could relate Idealism to the condition of Philippine education now after I have read the chapter tackling about educational goals of Idealism. What caught my attention was that Idealism encourages students to be truth-seekers and that schools should expose them to the wisdom contained in cultural heritage. The first thing I thought of were the latest trends in Philippine education today, which is the emergence of the Understanding by Design (UbD) and the K-12 system of education. Why? Let me explain further. The words "truth-seekers" made me relate it to the trend of UbD because whenever UbD is discussed, what comes to my mind is "life-long learning". When teaching through the UbD system, teachers are tasked to provide learning experiences for their students wherein they will be able to develop in them a sense of learning that is not "mababaw" or just memorizing just for the sake of learning. Rather, at the end of a discussion, students should have developed in them indepth learning, through which they were able to seek for truth and learn from it. This makes learning more valuable in contrast to just factual learning of names, dates and concepts. As to the K-12 system, this came to my mind after hearing the words "cultural heritage". I know that the K-12 system is being pushed here in the Philippines for us not only to be apar from other countries, but also to "improve" our current educational system. What made me say that the K-12 system is Idealistic in a way is because of the importance it gives to cultural heritage. As we all know, in the K-12 system, education in a certain region will depend on what that region "needs". Like for example, if a certain region is a producer of rice, agriculture will be the best kind of education that will be provided for students there because it will be the education that they will need and they will benefit from. This I think is a way of preserving our cultural heritage in the Philippines. But as I have continued reading through the chapter on Idealism, I noticed that the K-12 system somehow agreed to the philosophy of Idealism, but not all of it. What's contradicting between K-12 and Idealism is the part of focusing on vocational or general education. The K-12 system proposes to focus on vocational courses to enable students to be "employment ready" after they graduate from highschool. In contrast to what I have read, Idealism proposes on focusing on general education for it aims to assist students to realize fully the potentialities inherent in their human nature.

          These are just some of my thoughts as to how Idealism has been affecting the condition of Philippine education nowadays. How about you? Do you think Philippine education is Idealistic in a way?