IT is hilarious, if not tragicomic, that military men and hyper-partisans, mostly diehard Duterte supporters (DDS), would have the gall to accuse teachers and educators of brainwashing the minds of the young. This is not to exonerate those who are in the teaching profession who abandon their mission of educating the young by turning into purveyors of a single perspective on how to interpret history and politics.
At the outset, it is important to enlighten people on what academic freedom means, considering that this is the usual mantra deployed by professors and teachers to insulate ourselves from meddling by the state. Academic freedom does not imply that higher education is totally free from state regulation. The mere existence of the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) and the various technical panels on every academic discipline in higher education already implies that there are prescribed curricula and standards. However, the culture of higher education necessitates a balance between the minimum standards imposed by the state, and the granting of autonomy not only to higher education institutions (HEIs) but also to their professors and teachers.
Most people think that academic freedom is solely in the domain of the freedom accorded to professors to teach and communicate ideas or facts even if these are inconvenient or unpalatable to certain political groups or even to state authorities without the threat of repression, termination or prosecution. In fact, academic freedom also ensures that professors shall have the freedom to inquire and publish the results of those inquiries.
This freedom is not absolute, as it can be subjected to state regulation such as those exercised by CHEd, and by existing laws. However, it has already been well-established by tradition that other than the constraints provided by law and the regulatory gaze from CHEd, universities and colleges, and their professors are given much latitude in exercising their teaching vocation. Whatever transgressions done are addressed internally through prevailing practices manifested in the promotion, tenure and service review mechanisms that guide the operations of these universities and colleges vis-à-vis their professors and teachers.
Indeed, there are professors who transgress the boundaries of academic freedom. You see this when professors post libelous and slanderous statements in social media. Or when they blatantly disregard the ethical standards of their discipline amounting to actionable malpractice or unethical conduct, such as plagiarism and intellectual dishonesty. These acts are easily adjudicated against the prevailing laws of the country and the internal policies and procedures of the academic professions and institutions.
What becomes highly contentious is on the issue of whether professors already breach the boundaries of their academic freedom in the way they teach. There is a tendency to interpret academic freedom to mean that a teacher can teach whatever and however he or she wants to. But this is a mistaken notion of academic freedom, considering that degree programs have programs of study for which minimum core competencies are identified, and each course has a course syllabus clearly reflecting its role and niche in the ecology of courses in their respective programs.
However, it has always been a well-established culture in higher education, except for those programs that require professional licensure tests, that course syllabi are more indicative rather than strictly prescriptive. Hence, a course syllabus may include the core topics and readings, as minimum requirements, and the professor handling the course would now be granted more latitude to determine additional readings and activities, as long as the core content of the syllabus is complied with.
It is in this exercise of the prerogative of the professors where contentious issues may emerge. Certainly, a professor who disregards the approved core content of the course and instead teaches a totally different content and require students to perform activities that are totally unrelated to the intent of the course may already be abusing his or her academic freedom.
However, what must be impressed to assuage the fear of people that universities are getting out of control is to assert that beyond the internal rules and procedures to maintain standards, professors are always subjected to review not only by their superiors and peers, but also by students. In addition, higher education operates under the rubric of developing critical thinking, which can only be achieved when students are empowered not only to answer questions, but to develop ways to seek answers to questions that they have formulated.
It is therefore against this backdrop that it is preposterous for Sen. Bato dela Rosa or PNP chief Oscar Albayalde to suggest that the state, through its uniformed personnel, should invade academia to prevent professors from brainwashing their students. They must be told that higher education is not a one-person show. Unlike the military education that they both got where the ethos of obedience to a chain of command is embedded in the psyche of cadets, universities and colleges operate as a diverse field of teaching and learning. The biases of one faculty teaching one course can be neutralized by an opposing bias of another. The fact that not all students of UP and PUP became activists, much more joined the armed revolution, implies that there are intervening reasons why a student would opt to do so other than having one professor who is rabidly anti-government. One needs to look at other explanations, which would even include their family circumstances.
Universities that value critical thinking could not possibly brainwash their students in the same way military or police academies that produced Bato and Albayalde can program the minds of their cadets to obey and serve first without asking questions.
And indeed, it is a bit strange for people who are effectively influenced by their favorite social media personalities to become blindly loyal to the President — some even think that he is almost infallible and that he knows everything–to have the temerity to accuse universities like UP and PUP of brainwashing their students.
https://www.manilatimes.net/brainwashed/604121/
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