Saving our children
IN his war against drugs, President Duterte always mentions his almost obsessive concern about the future of our human resources. That if this war goes unabated, we will be endangering the physical and mental health of our population as a large percentage of children addicted to drugs would grow up into addle-brained adults. It would even be a larger population than the 5% of children suffering from stunted growth due to malnutrition.
Indeed, this is cause for alarm. But while we support the administration’s fight against drugs, we are likewise equally concerned with the protection of people’s rights for due process. Thus, we hope that when President Duterte noted that he is feeling much more “peaceful” after the ASEAN meeting, this state of mind and emotion is accompanied by regard for rights-based processes. We are with him about protecting the future by preventing growth of the drug menace and the influence of narcopolitics, but we would like to ensure that our future will be in the hands of caring, sensitive, tolerant, and humane adults who will contribute to the building of an inclusive and sustainable society.
Which brings me to the most challenging task of the current administration – that of building productive and appropriate human resources for for the next generation. Let me share two examples of how certain learning interventions can produce remarkable outcomes in the quality of learners. One is the ongoing multilingual education, a component of the K-12 program in basic education. The other is a story of nine ordinary families in the United States who raised “extraordinary kids.” What is interesting is that all 9 families shared commonalities which may explain their success, namely drive, grit, social and political consciousness, and freedom.
The Mother Tongue and Multilingual Learning project uses the mother tongue in the first three grades, transitioning to instruction in English and Filipino from Grade 4 onwards. The change in policy came after a 10-year experiment in the use of mother tongue in classrooms in the district of Lubuagan (Kalinga) which produced promising results. Children who took part in the MTB – MLE project known as the First Language Component (FLC) received instruction in the first language for the first three years of school. They also received instruction in oral English and Filipino. After 3 years, these children merged with others who have received instruction where English is the primary language of instruction. Standardized tests showed that by Grade 3, FLC participants outperformed their peers in a range of academic subjects – an average of more than 75% in mathematics, reading, English, and Filipino while students in monolingual schools obtained only 50% in average. Similar findings were found in countries which have embarked on the same experiment – in Thailand, Indonesia, Papua, among others.
The other case is a recent cover story of Time Magazine which concerns a study of nine immigrant families whose children turned out to become extraordinary achievers. The narrative explains their success as the result of commonalities such as (1) being immigrants which had given the children the additional motivation to work harder; (2) having parents who were teachers which explain their confidence in “asking questions” and “wrestling with complex ideas”; (3) political activism – which was influenced by parents who were outspoken in their demands for reform in cities, schools, and housing complexes, demonstrating for civil rights to union organizing. Political debates were encouraged at home; (4) controlled chaos. The parents did not try to shield their children from violence. Thus they grew up in an atmosphere heavy on conflict, light on manners, and indifferent to standards of appropriate behavior; (5) experiencing loss –death of a sibling or a loved one and a constant awareness of one’s own mortality; (6) a free-range childhood where children were allowed to do practically everything they wanted. One mother’s theory was: “the more you do for your kids, the less they do for themselves, and the less empowered they feel.”
There are many other examples – some in the form of intended learning experiments and others simply happened because the ingredients for success are present.