Straight up, I know I have been not been using my high order thinking skills and instead have been doing rote learning in high school. But here in UPOU, I believe that it has always been prompting us students to learn through comprehending, reflecting, applying and then creating.
High School Experience (Grade 7-12)
In high school, I can safely say that it was always about rote learning AND teaching! We were all just after the scores and grades, even the teacher. I remember in grade 7, my science teacher gave us which specific pages in the textbook to “memorize” and which topics have he most terminologies in the exam. Looking back, I do not remember much assessments that required us to use or apply our learnings, with the exception of mathematics and literature that is. Most of the time it was about identification, multiple choice, enumeration and rare instances of essays.
College Experience (First 2 Trimesters)
In UPOU, even if there were multiple choice quizzes, it was always about the reflection, use and application of knowledge to create solutions and researches with analysis, evaluation, and synthesis. I can immediately say that I feel more empowered to learn within the first two terms of college compared to my entire high school life. I guess the reason behind this is the type of motivation that dragged me to learn. In high school, I can say that behavioral and social factors and motivators influenced me to have an active learning behavior. But in college, the sheer thought of being a part of my learnings inspired me to know more to ignore less.
I feel like I’ve been saved from the dark scheme of the Philippine education that forces students to pick courses that pay more and earn high grades into the liberating educational system of learning to ignore less and to help society and the environment.
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"Aha!" Instances 