PBED’s ‘memorandum’ on Higher Education

THE guest speakers were really quite good. Derek Muller, a physics educator who masterminds Veritasium on YouTube in teaching natural science to all comers, stressed that there are no “revolutions” in education, despite dramatic changes in educational technology, just evolution; ultimately nothing beats the importance of the great teacher. Sarah Stein Greenberg confirmed Muller’s basic thesis, but fascinated the educators present with her successful methods of nurturing innovation at the offbeat Stanford “D. School” – design school. It midwives future innovators through design thinking and radical collaboration on big projects – like a group of her students who responded to the desperate situation of poor mothers and their premature babies in Nepal by designing an alternative and affordable incubator that actually saves lives.

The two talks teased the 700 educators assembled by the Philippines Business for Education (PBED) at SMX Taguig last Thursday with possibilities of evolution or re-design of higher education in the Philippines were it not strangled by governmental over-regulation and control. Among the possibilities mulled were students declaring life missions that determine their college learning experience instead of staid disciplinal majors, and entire higher education institutions (HEIs) focusing on such courses as wealth generation to fight poverty or the challenges of disaster risk reduction. On the other hand, the importance sine qua non of the effective teacher could not be overstressed.