Teaching against the tide
Last weekend, I joined a department meeting to review and update our undergraduate curriculum.
A curriculum review is standard for any university program. Periodic reviews guarantee that academic programs are responsive to current needs and context, all while ensuring that we teach timeless skills and concepts.
The process might include surveys of current and former students, interviews with prospective institutions that might hire them, and benchmarking with foreign universities with similar programs.
As we sat at the meeting, we wrestled with old problems: how do we continue to teach critical thinking? How do we integrate the students’ core courses of philosophy and theology into our courses? What kinds of skills should students have to excel in the workforce? What kinds of skills should they have to be compassionate human beings?
We parsed through new ones as well: artificial intelligence and the threat of creativity being outsourced; the highly granular, specialized courses in other countries; misinformation and disinformation facilitated by media and political figures.
It’s easy to peg misinformation and disinformation as education problems alone. It’s a trap that many fall into for many issues: People aren’t educated, so they won’t evacuate when told, go to a faith healer instead of a doctor, and believe what they read without thinking.
Yes, there is a role for education to play. But to blame education alone is to ignore the systemic issues that allow our societal problems to flourish.
To ignore these issues is to fail to address them.
Knowledge of natural hazards won’t matter as much when evacuation centers are dirty, when the food at the center consists of instant noodles and oversalted canned meats, when local leaders prioritize response over preparation.
Knowledge of one’s health won’t matter as much when one lives in an isolated town where there are no good doctors, or if one’s doctor is so overworked that they resort to handing out prescriptions without taking the time to discuss things with their patients, or when health care is so prohibitive and unaccommodating.
Even good journalism training can buckle beneath the weight of low salaries. Even the best writers surrender if they have to work in an atmosphere where emotions are made to battle against information—as though these two were enemies, as though there were purely experience-based versus fact-based storytelling.
Filmmaking and speaking truth to power, the skill of unearthing revolutionary narratives, and telling rebellious stories become mere buzzwords when festivals and producers bow to the pressures of politics.
Research, meticulous work, and systematic inquiry become mere classroom exercises when government and industry prioritize family ties and friendship.
Critical thinking becomes a mere class assignment, especially when lying, scheming influencers are given money and attention.
And there the government stands, saying education is the solution without providing funds to improve education, health care, and the economy.
As Paulo Freire and Simone de Beauvoir once said: “The interests of the oppressors lie in changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not in the situation which oppresses them; for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to that situation, the more easily they can be dominated.”
Dr. Randy David said it well last Sunday as he scrutinized the aftermath of the arrest of former president Rodrigo Duterte (see “In the aftermath of the Duterte arrest,” 3/23/25). Our country is a place where family supersedes citizenship, where anything compelling is given greater weight over anything that makes people think.
This was apparent even in the hearings last week, where vloggers admitted to sourcing their news from TikTok, playing with facts, and bloating issues for which they had no basis. Some of them even cried.
But, why?
Why would they cry, when they enjoyed exorbitant amounts of money for their lies and scandal? When they occupied positions of power while those with actual skills and good hearts lost their jobs, had their reputations destroyed online, were not given the chance to lead the country?
Why would these vloggers cry when they abused their freedom of speech?
The crying reminded me of demons who, after their lies have been discovered, plead with the exorcist for mercy. They are in pain because of their own hatred; they are in pain because they fear returning to the darkness that birthed them.
Perhaps all this time, the vloggers believed their own lies—so that when the reckoning came, they could do nothing but sob at how they no longer had control over their precious fake narratives. At how they, the oppressors, were unmasked for their evil.
These are the things we wrestle with in the academe. Not just funding, or rankings, or research. We struggle against a society that encourages blind idolatry, penalizes critical thinking, prizes unquestioning obedience—and expects educators to make students ready for that kind of world.
How can we teach students to fight against evil when society itself is built to perpetuate it?
