What students carry with them

For the Global Citizenship Education program I am currently taking online courtesy of UNESCO, we were asked to work through quite a pile of materials—journal articles, readings, YouTube videos, and recorded lectures on curriculum, equity, assessment, the hidden curriculum, and GCED.

I began them as a student trying to keep up with the requirements. But somewhere along the way, the teacher in me started taking over.

That happens when you have spent many years in a classroom. Theories start becoming personal. You read about assessment and remember that bright student who understood the lesson but somehow froze during exams. You read about equity and think of the student who kept submitting late until you learned there was only one phone at home.

Then I came across the hidden curriculum, and I thought of former students.

When you meet them years later, they rarely talk about the lesson you spent hours preparing. Instead, they say things like, “Sir, you gave me another chance,” or “Sir, you talked to me when I was having problems.”

Sometimes they remember our mistakes, too.

Students learn more than what is written in our lesson plans. They notice how we treat someone who is struggling, how we react to mistakes, and whose voice gets heard. That, I think, is the hidden curriculum at work.

That is not always comfortable to think about as a teacher. We may tell students to respect others and then embarrass one of them in class. We can discuss democracy but become annoyed when students question us. We can write “inclusion” in our course outcomes while giving requirements that some students can barely afford.

Sometimes what we do teaches louder than what we say.

GCED also began to make more sense to me when I stopped thinking of “global” as something far away. Here in Iloilo, the wider world is already part of everyday life.

It is there in a fishing family worried about the sea. It is in a household with a parent working abroad. It is in another typhoon, another false story spreading on Facebook, or a student trying to make prepaid data last until an assignment is submitted.

GCED asks us to educate beyond knowledge alone. It includes understanding and critical thinking, but also empathy, respect, and responsible action. Put simply: know, care, and do.

A student may know the textbook definition of poverty but not understand the life behind that definition. The same student may explain climate change correctly but never have spoken with a fisher whose income rises and falls with the condition of the sea. And anyone can memorize the 17 SDGs. That does not automatically make one a responsible citizen.

I also found education theorist Hilda Taba’s approach practical because it begins with learners and their needs before deciding what and how to teach.

We teachers sometimes reverse that order. We begin with the syllabus, textbook, PowerPoint, and deadline. Somewhere along the way, we remember the student.

Years of teaching have also changed how I understand fairness. I once thought fairness meant treating everybody exactly the same. Now I am not so sure.

“Submit by 11:59 p.m.” seems fair enough. Then you get to know your students. One has a laptop and reliable Wi-Fi. Another shares a phone with siblings and worries about running out of data. The deadline is the same. Their situations are not.

This is not about making things easier. Standards still matter. But fairness sometimes means giving students different kinds of support so they have a real chance to meet those standards.

The same goes for assessment. I teach mathematics, physics, and research, so I still believe in exams and correct answers. Two plus two cannot become five in the name of empathy. But not everything worth learning fits on an answer sheet.

What is the passing score for listening? How many points do we give for kindness? How do we grade a student who learns to say, “I was wrong,” after seeing better evidence?

GCED recognizes this. Tests have their place, but so do reflection, dialogue, performance, participation, and other ways of seeing what students have actually learned.

After all the articles, videos, and lectures, I found myself returning to a very old question: What is education for?

We need knowledge, skills, degrees, and jobs. Of course we do. But if education gives us all of these and somehow fails to make us more thoughtful, more caring, and more responsible toward other people, then I wonder if we have learned enough.

Years from now, my students will forget many of my lectures. They will forget formulas and definitions. They will probably forget some things I once warned would “come out in the exam.”

That is fine. What interests me more now is what remains after the forgetting.

For years, I kept asking myself, “Did I finish what I was supposed to teach?” Maybe there is a better question: “When my students leave my classroom, what do they carry with them?”

Perhaps global citizenship begins there. Not somewhere far across the world, but in an ordinary classroom, in the way we teach and treat one another, long before the bell rings.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a ‘student of and for life’ who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.