Teaching right

Lim: Teaching right
By Melanie T. Lim

I often feel that a lot of our children’s time in school is wasted learning things that really have no practical application in everyday life.

Let’s take science, for example. It seems ironical that our children can be so well versed about the solar system, the laws of physics and the different systems going on inside the human body yet when they walk into a supermarket, they can hardly identify the vegetables lying on the supermarket shelves.

Certainly, I would not want my child to be ignorant about the solar system, the laws of physics or the human body but I cannot help thinking that there are more important things our kids should be learning that is not being incorporated into the educational system.

Dr. Josette T. Biyo, Grand Winner of the 2002 Intel Excellence in Teaching Award, struck a chord in me when she related some of her early teaching experiences.

One day, as she was about to start her class in high school science, she opened the science book in front of her and then looked up and saw the hungry faces staring back at her. She closed the book and moved her classroom outside. She started their lesson by identifying all the leaves in the school backyard.

Dr. Biyo realized she had to devise a means to get her students to become interested in class. Eighty percent of them came from very poor families—she had to make it worth their while. Later, she taught her students how to make soap, shampoo and other products they could use at home from the plants found in their school backyard. If her students didn’t see the application of what they were learning, what motivation would they have to go back to school?

Why can’t we take a page from Dr. Biyo’s teaching methodologies? We may teach in a different school and to a different lot—a much more privileged one in many cases but the problem remains the same—how do we get the students’ interested?

How do we engage the attention of kids who have been pampered all their lives? How do we motivate kids to do more when all their lives they’ve never had to lift a finger to get what they want? In the plethora of competing attractions and distractions, how do we get our kids to choose to pay attention to us? I say, let’s teach them about real life.

I’m not saying that our kids are not learning anything useful in school. But, do our children really need to memorize the kinds of rhymes, feet and stanza forms in poetry? Is it not more than enough that they can write poetry from the passion of their young hearts?

If kids do not pay attention, it’s probably because we’re not teaching them anything useful or applicable to their lives. Kids are smart, they always ask, “Why do I have to learn this?” And as their teacher, it is our duty to make them see the light.

I always tell my niece, if you are the only one who passed your test in the entire class, there is nothing wrong with the rest of the class but there is something very wrong with your teacher. It is not always the student who fails. Sometimes, it is the system that fails the student.

(sunstarcebucolumnist@yahoo.com)

Why less is better

Lim: Why less is better
By Melanie T. Lim

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand that less kids is better than more.

Despite what others say that our burgeoning population has nothing to do with our increasing poverty, I still contend that even with other factors contributing to the problem, less is still better than more.

Less kids means less expenses, less problems, less stress. It’s simple Math.

Mr. A earns P6,000 a month and has a wife and child to support. Mr. B earns P6,000 a month and has a wife and five children to support. Whose life do you think will be better?

Of course, you could be netting P500,000 a month and be a lousy parent to your one child while your driver who earns P5,000 a month can quite possibly be a much better parent to his three children. Great parenting, after all, has nothing to do with the amount of money you have in your bank account.

Still, all things being equal, the one with less kids would more likely be a better parent by being able to provide a better life for his wife and children.

Most people always think of ways to increase their income and that’s not necessarily wrong. But sometimes, increasing your income is not feasible. In such case, you might want to change your perspective of things. You might want to think instead of decreasing your expenditures.

And having more children is NOT the way to do this. Of course, if you already have children, I don’t propose you give some of your children away or worse get rid of them in some other expedient manner. But you could think of putting an END to having MORE children in the future.

This is the reason why planning for the size of your family is important. While planning, you might want to be firm on one thing: the sex ratio of your kids. I cannot count the number of stories I’ve heard about how a wife came to be with six kids because she had five daughters in a row and she and her husband had been waiting for a son all along. This insanity of having a “perfect family” needs to be stopped. Besides, perfection has nothing to do with having X number of sons and daughters who may all turn out to be bums and nuts.

There are those who say that more children bring more joy. That may be true. But they bring more misery too. The fact of the matter is that the greater the number of people living in one house, the greater the possibility of conflict. This is why when you live alone—-other than those of the teleseryes you watch, there are no conflicts.

But when you live with an entire clan, you can be sure there will be word wars and fist fights—-because more people means more personalities who will take different positions on every issue from the war in Iraq to how much sugar you should put in your coffee.

I’m not saying, don’t have kids. I’m saying, have less rather than more. It’s not just about the number of mouths to feed, it’s also about the number of hearts to heal. I can see the old folks raise their eyebrows and click their tongues, saying, “I had six children. They’re all perfectly fine.” Well—-that’s what you think.

Now, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure this one out.