Values plus training
DR. Jose Rene Gayo is a firm believer in values formation as the basis for genuine people development. Drawing from his exposure to the Piso at Puso Program, he decided to incorporate proper values into extension work that he was responsible for at the University of Asia & the Pacific (UA&P). Under his guidance, the University undertook a few extension projects, more specifically “livelihood projects in Barrio Tulo and Carmelray” in Calamba, Laguna. He insisted that the “beneficiaries of livelihood projects should also be given weekly sessions on values formation.”
However, based on this experience in which university students were involved, Dr. Gayo found out that the “major beneficiaries of the university’s extension work were the students and staff from UA&P. Those who were involved in the livelihood projects as volunteers learned much more than the principles they were seeing being observed and transmitted. Of greater importance was that for many of the students, this was their first direct contact with the poor and the underprivileged. Coming as they usually do from the upper classes of society, these students had no idea how the poor were coping with life. Thus, extension work was also a way of inculcating in these students social responsibility.”
Values training, essential as it is, never goes far enough. The poor are in need of jobs, income, and livelihood. Values training alone cannot supply any of these; it will have to be supplemented by other types of training, particularly of the technical type.
This is where the “family farm school” concept comes in: the concept applies to young people in rural areas who often time have no reasonable access to a high school education. At least for those farm-based youth who have already gone through primary and intermediate-level education, perhaps a high-school education can be provided?
Dr. Gayo together with a few others from the business community came up with a work-study arrangement, which allows high school subjects to be taught in a farm school, and these subjects are immediately followed up by hands-on practical training in a farm. Theory is never dissociated from actual practice; and the farm school sends out its faculty to visit students to check on them how they are coming along putting into practice the lessons they learned in school. From the evidence thus far presented, the farm school concept works, to a point that every province is now required, by law, to have at least one farm school using the “dual-training” method, combining high school classes with actual experience from engagement in some farm enterprise.
What happens in a farm can also happen in industry. The dual training method in this instance is made available to high school graduates who, for various reasons, mainly economic ones, cannot afford to go to college. They are given an opportunity to get training in a technical institute, with a partnership agreement with industrial enterprises that are more than open to provide apprenticeship arrangements for those still undergoing technical training. The on-the job-training complements the lessons learned at the technical institute, which also takes care of the basic values formation of the trainees. Again, based on the evidence, the dual training method for trainees that would then find employment with manufacturing enterprises is now recognized and actively promoted by Philippine law.
In sum, values formation simply provides the foundation for active engagement in enterprises either in farm areas or in industrial zones. For such engagement to materialize and become possible, people with limited educational background from relatively underprivileged backgrounds should then be given technical and other related training. This should equip them for employment in farms or in industries.