PAGBABAGO

“Pandemic generation” is a term used by the recent Commission on Human Rights (CHR) report to refer to the “first wave of students” who had gone through pandemic learning.  Today, in our post-pandemic normal, the graduates  are finding it difficult to land jobs. They  experience “culture shock” because their earlier training had not equipped them to face the realities of the working environment. The report attributed the problem to the inability of the K-to-12 Program to equip senior high school grad-uates with competencies for further studies but also for employment. They lack the so-called “life and soft skills” which are of critical importance in the workplace. These life and soft skills are practical job skills that enable them to undertake the day-to-day jobs in the market. Among others, they include “empathy, creativity, resilience, communication skills.” For the past three years, these students have been deprived of an environment where they are able to have the benefit of face-to-face meetings with teachers and classmates. Thus, they have lost the capacity to interact, in a dialogue or continuing exchange with fellow students. The absence of opportunity to listen together, and to think together,  which can only happen in a face-to-face setting, had resulted in  consequences such as lessened sensitivity shown in lack of  awareness, empathy,  and full attention. The importance of human dialogue had been emphasized in the works of earlier scholars like Socrates and Plato in what is described as the “Socratic dialogue.” Then in the late 50s, psychologists Carl Rogers and Mar-tin Buber had written a collection about their own experiences in the book “Human Dialogue” with their thesis on the need for self-knowledge in their dialogic experience which they described as “I-Thou.” In our present work environment which is not only conflict-ridden but competitive, soft skills such as prob-lem-solving, conflict-management, adaptability, teamwork, emotional intelligence, and time management are not only important,  but essential.  In fact, although the 3 R’s – reading, writing, and arithmetic are critical, they require complementary soft skills to achieve needed productivity. Thus, the need for continuing advocacy for blended learning as the wave of the future  It is evident  that alt-hough the formal classroom is essential, the exigency for a more informal setting for learning and the applica-tion of new technological innovations has also been demonstrated. In the meantime, we should undertake continuing research on the impact of the pandemic on learning. At the rate the quality of learning  in the country had deteriorated, additional resources  will be needed to catch up in our race toward  quality education. My email, [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])