Washington SyCip Thinks About PH Education, And This UP Teacher Thinks About Enriching UP System’s Academic Freedom!

The just-concluded PH national & local elections, especially the presidential voting, or what is shaping up as non/victory – among other things, has called attention to the kind of education that we Filipinos have been undergoing since the American Thomasites came in the 1900s. This is a UP System teacher speaking.

Our multi-interest & inquisitive friend Ramon Yedra has shared on Facebook a glimpse of the thinking of Washington SyCip of the smashingly successful SyCip Gorres Velayo, which Mr SyCip founded [?] March 1946 as a one-man accounting firm. Today, “SGV is currently the Philippines' largest multidisciplinary professional services firm with nine offices across the country” (sgv.ph). These include “assurance, tax, strategy and transactions, and consulting services.”

Thus, anyone can be in awe of Washington SyCip. Quoted above:

My father insisted that the whole family go to public school because public schools could compete. I went to Mapa High School and Burgos Elementary School. I could compete with any La Salle or Ateneo graduate.

Competition. Education as equalizer. I teacher am sure Mr SyCip outcompeted most, if not all of them.

Now, if you look at SGV’s big 4-5 groups of services – they are in the field of “critical thinking.”

Mr SyCip thought about education as the door to competition for the poor to get out of poverty.

Now, I public (UP) teacher ask: “Why did Washington SyCip not succeed in the field of education for conquering poverty?” One answer: “He did not discover transformative education.”

Above, the lower image is from the Facebook page of Saint Louis University (SLU) in Baguio City (Facebook.com/slu.edu.ph). On its Facebook page, SLU says:

Saint Louis University is an excellent missionary, and transformative educational institution that is zealous in developing human resources to be creative, competent, socially involved, and imbued with the Christian Spirit.

Excellent! This UP System’s teacher says. And that gives me an idea:

Why not the UP System “enlarge” its concept of Academic Freedom to include not only “Critical Thinking” but more so “Creative Thinking” – an undiscovered country in many a UP System campus!?

Public or private, education should be much more creative and less critical. At UP Los Baños, where I obtained my BSA major in Ag Edu in 1965. I was already both a creative and critical thinker that UPLB did not have to teach! And that is how I discovered myself with my open mind American gentleman farmer Edward H Faulkner’s organic farming technique he called “trash farming” – and which today I have seen as “regenerative farming.” (For more details, see my essay “For A Happier & Healthier Habitat Philippines! Triple A For Agriculture,” 16 Feb 2022, Towards A New Eden, Blogspot.com).

A creative mind is an open mind. If I were notcreative, I would simply have criticized Mr Faulkner’s idea using the UP Los Baños chemical agriculture paradigm!

What the world needs now is an education, public or private, that teaches critical as well as creative thinking. This layman teacher salutes you, Saint Louis University, Baguio City!@517