EDITORIAL COLUMN – TO TEACHER: LIBERALIZE EDUCATION!

To Teacher: Liberalize Education!

Carl Patrick S. Tadeo

Gone are the days when our teachers served as ‘sage on stage’. As 21st century education

necessitates, teachers are just ‘guide on the side’ that facilitates learning.

But teachers though have been given with enough trainings and seminars still exercise their

conventional ways of teaching. They are still applying their ancient pedagogical forms of planning,

instruction and assessment.

Majority of the activities in the class are paper and pencil tests. This is a very subjective way in

assessing students for they have different intelligences as pointed out by the Theory of Multiple

Intelligence of Howard Gardner.

Teacher still serves as the master of the lesson by spontaneously discussing all the needed

concepts for the students to learn. This way had been improved. Teachers should employ a collaborative,

constructivist and outcome-based education to improve the academic performance of students.

In planning, the teacher selects the most practical and appropriate thing based on her own

precepts not asking if these are suitable for the students. Students have different learning styles and so the

teacher should try to target these styles. He/she should devise a teaching style that would suit the learning

styles of the students. With these optimum result can be seen on the students.

Having these points teachers should have a paradigm shift from a teacher-centered education

scheme to a learner-centered education scheme.

It is never too late. Now is the time for teachers to improve the quality of education by employing

21st century pedagogies and liberalize education!