True educator

MY dear friend Cora Quisumbing-King e-mailed me Sunday night the sad news that her mother, Madame Lourdes Reynes-Quisumbing had died. Without doubt many will remember Madame Quisumbing for the big and imposing figure she was in the field of education.

I honor her specifically for the pedagogy she espoused and for which I admired her as a great and true educator.

In 1971 Madame Quisumbing asked me to teach a Theology subject at St. Theresa’s College, Cebu, of which she was then the Dean. The invitation excited me as my M.A. in Religion was five years old and unused. Still, I did not exactly jump at it like a duck would at water.

I told Madame Quisumbing I would be glad to teach at St. Theresa’s but, as I respectfully added, only if she could give me free rein with my pedagogy or teaching method. I detailed this to her and she readily acceded to my request.

As it turned out it was a pedagogy she preferred and promoted within set limits of the country’s educational system. Hence, I had to agree to something I was not a fan of, giving grades and issuing periodic report cards.

My former students will recall that there were no lessons but only discussions on the subject. I required no textbook because I did not want to limit my students to memorizing answers from one book. Thus, we never had the usual true-or-false, yes-or-no or filling-the-blank tests.

All test questions required an essay-type answer and the class was free to open all books and other reference materials during exams. The whole idea was to teach critical thinking.

Madame Quisumbing was fully with me when I shared with her my abhorrence of the regurgitation method where the teacher assigns pages from a textbook for students to study (more like memorize really) and regurgitate at exam time. The essay-type tests were meant for me to discern who in the class were thinking, not just memorizing, and to what depth.

Rote answers are forgotten even before the ink on test papers has dried. But answers that students have to crunch out enable them to search critically for their own answers to whatever questions life would throw at them after graduation.

I will never forget how overjoyed the class was at their first exams when I announced that they were free to open any book or reference material. But I will also never forget how their heads dropped when I gave out the questions.

They knew immediately they had to use their brains to answer them. There were no questions they could answer from memory. A true educator is one who teaches a man or woman how to think critically for him/herself.

I honor Madame Quisumbing in death for the true educator that she was in life. I hope her legacy of true education lives on.