The latest hullaballoo in Dumaguete’s academic front is the strike conducted by over 180 teachers and staff members of Silliman University in a protest rally. The SUFA, in a statement sent to GMA News Online, confided that members decided to go on strike after parties failed to reach an agreement on seven deadlocked issues.
On the other hand, SU management reacted by saying that it respected the faculty members’ right to stage a strike but that it urged the faculty union “to respect measures put in place by the Administration to ensure the continued administration of learning opportunities to its students through adaptive measures.” It added that the university, just like other academic institutions in the country “is still adjusting to the financial implications of the K+12 program,” but it “offers salary increases, bonuses, and other benefits that are prudent.”
Whatever will be the resolution to this conflict, and even if both parties will get their respective demands, the real “casualties” to this clash (the students) will never recover what they have lost in the days that the skirmish was ongoing. Thus, while it is important that academic institutions be able to efficiently manage schools’ daily operations, it also cannot be denied that schools need their teachers to be able to serve its purpose. Because the truth is, despite the presence of technology, human teachers are a necessity.
Teachers’ significance in students’ lives
While online learning is ubiquitous, teachers’ significant role in the life of learners cannot be disregarded. The function of teachers in education encompasses past the obligation of passing along information. While the major task of teachers includes the instruction of a variety of facts and skills to students, they also integrate a multidimensional sense of purpose aimed to boost a young person’s social, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual development.
All over the world, education reformers argue that people need to rethink, reinvent and revive schools and universities. More than anything else, teachers’ roles will also need to change. A few argue that the teaching profession may even disappear as learners turn to online and alternative resources, while, others argue that teachers should take on more responsibilities to meet shifting requirements and demands.
American scholar, educator, business consultant, and religious leader Clayton Christensen predicted that by 2019, more than 50 per cent of classroom education will be individualized and computer based, however, even if this is going to happen, we still need to ensure that children’s emotional needs are also being met. Although the landscape of childhood has dramatically changed, the emotional needs of children remain as ever. They need love guidance and a sense of security.
Technology and teachers
Technology does not compete with teachers, nor are teachers in contention with technology. These two are complementary. Compassion and responsiveness can never come from a screen, it can only be developed experientially. John Hattie, education researcher and once Director of the Melbourne Educational Research Institute, speaks to the non-rule based complex methods that students need to develop — ways that computers cannot take over easily. In truth, people are drowning in information, yet, going through a deprivation of wisdom.
What do students need to be successful? Children need feedback from the adults in their universe in order to prosper and succeed. This is especially true for younger children who learn through relationships. In the brains of young people, the regions of cognition and emotion are so indivisibly and intricately connected that one cannot take apart thinking from feeling. In other words, when a child’s feelings are not properly managed, thinking can be diminished.
Today, teachers of young children are being trained in neuroscience so that they can appreciate how learning happens. Parents, the child’s first and most ineffaceable teachers, are also increasingly aware that the emotional environment in which a child lives plays a significant role in brain development.
Teachers, through their feedback, help students deal with mistakes and any perceived failures. In our fast-paced, success-oriented culture it is important for children to learn to deal with disappointment and failure. The teacher is on the spot to encourage, to acknowledge effort, and more importantly, to see the person that the student/child is. We all remember the teacher who turned us on to learning, generally, or in a particular subject area. This special teacher may not have been unique in his or her teaching talents but most assuredly was empathic and able to see and appreciate us. Having interaction with a teacher versus a computer allows a child to feel seen, understood and appreciated. Teachers are coaches and can create a love of learning and pathways through difficulties because they care. The ethic of care in education is ignored at our peril. Teaching is now more about the learner than the curriculum and teacher preparation is increasingly integrating social and emotional learning and the significance of empathy.
A significant body of research speaks to the quality of teaching as being the single most important ‘in-school’ factor affecting student learning and achievement. Eric Hanushek, a Stanford economist, confirmed that of all the variables in learning and things that schools could control, high-quality teachers mattered most, ahead of class size, curriculum and the amount of money spent on students. I strongly agree that investment in the teacher must come ahead of other issues.
Far from being outdated or unnecessary, the teaching profession is out to reinvent itself in this globalized and restructured world. To care is to teach and to teach is to touch the future. The challenge and the hope of this century would be to revisit the cultivation of relationships and empathy in classrooms and to support teachers in learning how best to capitalize on the use of technology and the power of their own humanity.
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Author’s email: wea_129@yahoo.com
