I open this column with a short story about how I re-engineered my environment to reverse my steadily rising weight since the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions were lifted. My struggle with my excessive weight illustrates the advice that cultural engineering is something we should do to our home and school environments to improve students’ learning performances and increase their chances of succeeding in life.
Before the end of 2024, I had an immense and growing concern: my increasing body weight! I knew I had to re-engineer my spatial and virtual surroundings to give my immediate surroundings a major role in my re-creation. The expanding problem started after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted in 2023. The forbidden foods, which are the most delicious or savory, became easily accessible to all. I didn’t feel right away that binge eating would be a problem, as I regularly exercised. However, evidence eventually bloated; my fat-burning routine could not keep up with my mouth. Also, my body has become too accustomed to the comforts that my work schedule allows. I started to feel sluggish, listless, and sleepy most of the time.
I surveyed my immediate environment and realized that all the mouth-watering and other nearly irresistible components of disaster are within easy reach. I’ve been feasting on them for 18 months. I could become sick any time, be in terrible pain, and, though it’s too soon, I might expire early. The last one is an exaggeration, but it’s not impossible. I decided quickly that it’s time to re-engineer my environment, the construction site of the person I should become within the shortest period, without resorting to any drastic and irrational lifestyle change.
To modify my environment and routine, I started with a goal, a vision of the person I wanted to become: strong, physically fit, agile, happy, alive, athletic (again), and relaxed. I should lose at least 28 lbs. to achieve this while gaining muscle endurance, strength, and power. However, my environment had to be altered to facilitate the formation of the right mindset to secure my goal. I had my resistance bands, slam balls, dumbbells, kettlebells, hand boxing weights, and weighted and non-weighted basketballs ready for use in different parts of our house. I expanded and deepened my knowledge about building a healthy body after creating a one-person (I alone) social media private “group,” where I could post, review, and evaluate scientific information about diet, exercise, vitamins, nutrients, and the workings of the human body. I decided to include regular boxing sessions at the gym and the use of the basketball court beside our house in my exercise routine. Long story short, I’m now only two lbs. away from losing 28 lbs., which I recently decided is just my first goal. There will be higher ones. For now, I’d say that I would have fizzled out in my 68-day fruitful struggle had I not altered my environment, interests, and priorities.
Again, here is the point of this column: To develop little children into mentally healthy individuals and high-value and — achieving citizens, their parents, teachers, and communities need to re-engineer their learning environments, granting that these venues are not conducive to sustained progressive learning. Learning environments here include cyberspace and the spatial milieu and minds of the learners.
Let’s begin with the home environment. Parents should be mindful of the social conditions and cultural patterns that could influence the development of their children’s body and psyche.
Are any of the following concerns a common sight in your home environment? The learner: spends more time with their digital devices (for leisure and pleasure purposes) than with school-related tasks; turns out a hastily made mediocre output to maximize leisurely time spent with digital devices; dislikes physical exercises; and enjoys a steady supply of high-sucrose or -fructose sweets. In addition, parents are habitually glued to their mobile phones and rarely seen reading books, and are accustomed to uninterrupted comfort. Do you get the drift? Feel free to add more items to the list.
What do parents want their children to become? Answer: Citizens with the required competencies to make good decisions and succeed in life, and individuals predisposed to engage in and enjoy constructive pursuits outside work. Parents generally wish to see their children become persons who will live and enjoy flourishing lives.
A home environment defined by counterproductive cultural patterns will hinder any attempt to encourage young children to focus on school-related work to succeed as individuals and citizens.
The parents must promptly step in to break all the destructive cultural patterns within their home environments. Here are some steps parents could take to re-engineer their children’s home environment:
Make some rules and schedules for using digital devices, and strictly implement them. This may not be easy initially because children might resist, thinking that their loosely regulated digital device time is an entitlement or right. The likely struggle can cause stress, but the parents must stay firm. Remember, the older generations survived all those decades when they were young learners, before the advent of the Internet technology. Note that the latest models of digital devices and their offerings are more bewitching than ever. The high they give is too addictive that they could ruin, mounting evidence from research shows, the lives of the futures of young and adult users. So, those destructive distractions must be parked, unless needed for school-related work, until they can be enjoyed in moderation during the weekend if the children have earned the privilege or followed the house rules. I’m wondering if it’s proper to outlaw unlimited, unregulated, and non-school-related use of devices among children during schooldays except Friday after school?
Make it clear that school-related learning is a priority and aimed at attaining mastery (or excellence); therefore, mediocre, rushed, or mere compliance outputs are questionable. Faithful observance of this rule should be part of the home culture. This rule will be easier to implement with the devices parked until Friday after school. Don’t worry. You’ll most likely eventually see that children will resort to reading books as an alternative activity if they have been forbidden to touch their devices for non-academic purposes during school days.
Promote a healthy lifestyle. This is similarly undervalued in many home environments. There are now incontrovertible pieces of scientific evidence that students who are physically and mentally healthy tend to perform better in school. Parents greatly influence their children, so experts recommend that children see their parents exercising regularly and engaging in relaxation, recreational, or meditative activities. Get those treadmills oiled and other exercise equipment ready for use. But isn’t it fitting for parents to require their children to exercise regularly at home, especially if their sports program in school is inadequate?
Keep the high-sucrose or -fructose sweets away. Health scientists have found that sustained consumption of these unhealthy sweeteners, which are commonly used to make candies irresistible to children, can effectively impair cognitive processes such as learning and memory work. High-fructose and -sucrose consumption was also found to be among the culprits of cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease. The same substances were found to affect gut bacteria and mood negatively. Daily and uncontrolled consumption of harmful sweets can’t be a part of the home and school culture. Truth be told, I have yet to hear a health expert advising parents to provide their children a steady supply of foods sweetened with fructose and sucrose.
Make lots of books available in the house. Learning from experience is vital in the modern world, but it is not enough. Reading good books expands the intellectual horizons and sharpens the thinking skills of children. Reading informs the decisions that future adult citizens will make when addressing issues that could be personal, social, political, cultural, religious, economic, aesthetic, moral, psychological, theoretical, or practical. It is thus wise to advise that reading good books should be a part of the home culture.
Similarly, schoolteachers generally want to see their students blossom into successful professionals, wise voters, responsible parents, and mentally healthy and happy individuals who will live fulfilling lives.
Since no school in the Philippines is perfect and many are far from being so, schoolteachers, including school administrators, must also step in to introduce or develop cultural patterns that can help build good citizens and individuals. Here, too, are some steps educators could take to re-engineer the students’ school environment:
Strictly enforce the rule that everyone listens with an open mind when someone is talking. This rule should be implemented across the curriculum and across all grade levels to increase the likelihood that the practice will transform into a cultural character of the school. This advice stems mainly from the observation that close-minded people are inclined to make mistakes in their search for better answers to difficult problems in different areas of life. It would be ideal if students had already acquired the habit of approaching issues with an open mind, even before they graduate from elementary school, long before they become voters, parents, and workers.
Prohibit any display of animosity toward anyone who does not share your views. This rule is related to the first one, but it has to be introduced as separate advice, as it emphasizes objectivity and civility, especially in a collective search for better answers to controversies or stubborn social problems. At a young age, students should realize that disagreements should be settled using reason rather than fallacious thinking, which seems to be the norm on the Internet, especially in social media.
Emphasize the necessity of critical thinking in making informed decisions or choices. For instance, it would be wise to require that the election of class officers be not concluded within the short Homeroom period. The exercise should be treated as a serious event, giving the voters an ample period — perhaps, one or two weeks — to evaluate the candidates using a set of relevant criteria (to be developed by the students with the help of the teacher) before they finally cast their votes. This should be an extended schoolwide practice across grade levels where the election of class officers is customarily conducted.
Of course, schoolteachers and administrators could take other steps to develop desirable cultural patterns in the school environment. This column also points out that despite our economic limitations, we could certainly take many actions to upgrade the quality of education in Philippine schools.
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Email Dr. Mike Muega at mgmuega1@up.edu.ph
