By Joshua Corcuera
Last week, I received my grades for the preliminary period — or simply prelim — of my first semester this school year. For context, I am a sophomore student at a large university in Manila taking up accountancy. It is common knowledge that, for this school year or semester at least, classes in the Philippines have to push through in an online set-up due to the coronavirus pandemic. As a consequence, classes — and the distribution of grades — would be conducted online.
In our school, the academic year started in the last week of August. Two months later, our grades for the prelim were released online. Out of the nine subjects I enrolled in, I received an uno — the highest possible grade — in seven subjects. I received 1.5 in another subject which is also high and the last subject’s grade was not yet encoded due to the professor’s personal reasons. As incredible as it seems to be, it should not necessarily be the case.
Online classes — as I have reiterated in my previous opinion pieces — would be more of compliance with requirements, and less of genuine learning. So far, from a personal perspective, this is indeed the case. For instance, law subjects are normally taught through the Socratic method — basically recitation and a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue. However, my professor in law — particularly the law on sales and credit transactions — teach the subject by giving the class a contract to craft and submit on or before a particular date.
Even though I learned a few things from the subjects I am enrolled in, these are usually basic concepts that can be understood through self-study. When compared to what I have learned in traditional classes, online classes would pale in comparison. Obviously, this is worrisome especially for students who are enrolled in a course with a board exam like accountancy simply because it could affect their performance in the licensure exams.
Although I highly appreciate the enormous efforts of my professors to teach their respective subjects, it is honestly difficult to learn complex and difficult topics through online classes. For this reason, it is imperative for educational institutions to ensure a much more effective way of lecturing their students despite the online set-up.
Hopefully, classes done in the traditional way can be safely performed next semester which is by January of 2021. For this to become a reality, the government should further intensify its efforts to get rid of the coronavirus in the country. Through this, the safe resumption of face-to-face classes can be ensured. In other countries, life is already returning to normal even without a vaccine against the highly contagious coronavirus. The-powers-that-be must aspire for the same to happen before the year ends. More importantly, they should listen to key experts and to people who are severely affected by the public health crisis even if their voices would be painful for them to hear.
Altogether, my prelim grades in college reminded me that achieving higher marks does not necessarily equate to genuinely learning something. My blockmates cannot even boast their grades thinking that they do not deserve such outstanding academic achievement. More importantly, genuinely learning and developing a healthy and critical mind should be the utmost priority of learners when they attend school. Although grades are indeed important, these have no purpose at all if one does not truly learn.
