REMOVING general education (GE) courses from the higher education curriculum risks producing “efficient robots” lacking cultural consciousness and critical and ethical thinking, a UST philosophy professor warned at a Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) symposium.
Prof. Paolo Bolaños, former chairman of the UST Department of Philosophy, said GE courses were crucial to developing cultural knowledge and civic consciousness among students.
“These [general education courses] are profoundly crucial because [they] are the very vehicles in the transmission of cultural consciousness,” Bolaños said during CHEd’s symposium titled “Goals and Structure of Higher Education Degree Programs.”
“We risk producing very efficient robots who will not be able to think critically and decide ethically,” he added.
Bolaños argued that cultural knowledge and civic consciousness form part of the foundation of economic growth and human capital and should not be viewed as being at odds with them.
“Citizens are members of society. To be a member of society means having cultural knowledge and civic consciousness,” he said.
“Their consciousness will be devoid of national and institutional memory, and perhaps they will be blind consumers of AI-generated poetry and music because they have lost the ability to create art by themselves,” Bolaños added.
CHEd previously proposed an overhaul of the GE curriculum that would reduce the required units from 36 to 18, raising concerns among academic groups over the possible removal or consolidation of courses in the humanities and social sciences.
READ: CHEd: Proposed overhaul of gen ed courses part of ‘continuing reform’
The implementation of the reframed GE curriculum was deferred to 2028 to allow further review of the proposal and consultations with stakeholders.
Bolaños called for the planned curriculum changes to remain on hold while authorities assess whether they would actually improve graduate employability and quality.
“We have been producing incompetent and employable graduates, but either we send them away to work abroad or they don’t find work here at home,” he said.
The symposium also tackled reforms implemented at the basic education level, including the K to 12 program.
Bolaños said the country’s three main education agencies—the Department of Education, Technical Education and Skills Development Authority and CHEd—lacked a unified framework.
“We have three different offices that we have to admit, most of the time, don’t really talk with each other. The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. And so, fragmented ‘yung policies,” he said.
(And so, the policies are fragmented.)
He also urged the government to increase funding for research in the humanities.
“The government should invest more in education, research, possibly in all fields, but most especially in fields that promote the highest expressions of human freedom,” Bolaños said.
Among the subjects that could be affected by the proposed curriculum reform are humanities-related courses such as Ethics, Art Appreciation and the Contemporary World.
Bolaños was joined at the symposium by House Committee on Higher and Technical Education Chair Jude Acidre, House Committee on Basic Education and Culture Chair Roman Romulo, Government-Academe-Industry Network President Monette Hamlin and IBON Foundation Research Executive Director Rosario Guzman.
