IMPROVING TEACHER DEVELOPMENT: INTERNATIONAL MANUAL

IMPROVING TEACHER DEVELOPMENT: INTERNATIONAL MANUAL

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Gracious day from the Philippines!

For those who are in pedagogy and capacity-building, here is a recently released manual on improving teachers’ and educational quality. Released by the UNESCO, the manual is titled: Teachers and Educational Quality: Monitoring Global Needs for 2015.

This well researched material, which took 25 countries as country cases to accomplish, could just be the one we need to search for fresh ideas on how to address the problem of declining quality of education world-wide. Declining teachers’ quality redounds to declining instructional quality, thus resulting to low aptitude levels as measured by math, sciences and language abilities.

Below is an apt briefer about the said manual coming from the UNESCO site.

[Philippines, 07 November 2011]

Source: http://publishing.unesco.org/details.aspx?&Code_Livre=4456&change=E

Teachers and Educational Quality: Monitoring Global Needs for 2015

Albert Motivans, Thomas Smith and Michael Bruneforth

UNESCO Reference Works series

Ce titre est disponible.

25,00 € €

Livre, 216 pages, 48 figures, 9 tables, 21 boxes

Format: 28 × 21,5 cm

2006, 978-92-9189-033-0

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Teachers and Educational Quality: Monitoring Global Needs for 2015 provides global and regional assessments on the state of teachers and education quality. By highlighting trends in the numbers and quality of teachers, especially in developing countries, it explores the policy implications that come into play when attempts are made to bridge any gaps between the two. It also compares the strengths and shortcomings of recruitment and deployment policies, as well as looking at working conditions around the world.

Data on less-developed countries, in particular, are presented from a wide range of sources. These include administrative data, student assessment studies and special data collection on primary and secondary teachers in 25 countries. Aiming to inform policy-making, the report employs international benchmarks for monitoring change.

This publication also features a unique methodology for simulating teacher demand by 2015. It not merely projects demand, but defines fixed targets described in terms of indicators, also applying a model to quantify the minimum required to reach stated goals.

Also available in the UNESCO Reference Works series

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GURU OF NATIONHOOD

Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza

Good afternoon from Manila!

Is it possible to practice guru for nationhood? Everybody who knows the term ‘guru’ or teacher expects the role of somebody who mentors on the level of the individual psyche, or intervenes on the individual level. Let me shed light about the matter.

There are different levels of consciousness and awareness. Each one of us has an individual aspect to our consciousness, which sociologists call the ‘individual self’ or authentic self. The individual self is the repository of our personality, the totality of our behavior system that allows us to behave in many circumstances in a unique way. The mind of our unique self is called the ‘individual mind’ plain and simple.

As we move up the ladder of sociality, we encounter the ‘collective consciousness’. Sociologists used the terms ‘conscience collective’ (Durkheim), ‘social consciousness’ (Marx), and ‘social self’ (G.H.Mead) to refer to this level of consciousness and type of self. The rules that guide our behavior are deposited in our collective memory and operate through our ‘social self’.

The nation is a cultural being that comprises of a congregation or agglomeration of diverse ethnicities, races, social classes, genders, and other social identities. At the level of nation, collective consciousness operates and congeals as rules, national culture and identity. Nationhood therefore is no fixed thing, born from out of a silver platter, but is rather an entity that has to be collectively constructed.

It is in the task of constructing nationhood that diverse teachers do come to help mold minds of people towards accepting a common culture, identity and normative template as a people. Gurus are indeed sent from time to time, whose missions have to do with galvanizing collective consciousness towards an ‘enlightened society’ rather than focus on individual learning of the Teaching.

Among the various mystics who were sent forth by the Divine Hierarchy to focus on the collective consciousness formation, Jose Rizal and Mahatma Gandhi come to mind as the prototypes for modernity. Rizal, the Philippines’ national hero, practically expended his time and effort teaching his fellow islander Malayans in accepting an identity as ‘Filipino’ and learning the patriotic values and duties that go with practicing citizenship.

Mahatma Gandhi, who read Rizal and must have been aware of the mystic-guru side to the first Filipino, likewise embarked on the noble mission of teaching nationhood for his beloved India. Among the patriotic virtues that he taught, that of ahimsa (peace/non-violence) stands out as the most. He preached nationhood till the last breath of his physical body, and did a lot of punishing self-sacrifices just to prove his point. Even his profession and money pursuits he sacrificed in the last instance.

Both of them eventually lost their lives for the cause. Rizal was executed by the Spanish overlords of his beloved Philippines, while Gandhi was assassinated by a partisan fanatic. During that moment of death, what people don’t realize is that, as their respective souls departed, they made inner commitments to Cosmic Hierarchy that they partly shoulder the collective karma of their nation. In other words, they carried the cross for their nation, in the same way the Jesus carried the cross of the entire planet Earth’s humanity.

In a similar way, gurus who intervene on the level of individual consciousness do take a part of the karma of their respective individual disciples. Some of them suddenly acquire incurable cancer, some would lose their voice partly, while some others could die from absorbing so many vibrations and bad karmas of their disciples. That’s what it means to become a guru: take on the cross for others.

So, Fellows, let us please appreciate the noble works of gurus for nationhood for their selfless dedication to their thankless jobs. They more than deserve accolades for their sacrifices and gargantuan feats. No wonder why some people regard them as worth the cult worship, revere them like gods. They deserve enormous respect, to say the least.

[Writ 09 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]