Devoid, Bare

 

                                              (image:Sara Duterte FB page)

Bare. Devoid of anything.

With the issuance of DepEd Order 21, series of 2023 which is also known as the 2023 Brigada Eskwela Implementing Rules and Guidelines, a lot reacted on Section B.2 where it states: Classroom walls shall remain bare and devoid of posters, decorations or other posted materials. Classrooms should not be used to stockpile materials and should be clear of other used items or items for disposal.

Thus, Operation Baklas became the tagline of teachers on their social media posts during the duration of the schools’ maintenance week. There were those who are happy about the introduced change and, as expected, there are those who ranted.

Aside from allowing the teachers to concentrate on teaching than be busy with updating their bulletins and unit boards, are there studies relative to this mandate?

Psychology researchers Anna V. Fisher, Karrie E. Godwin and Howard Seltman of Carnegie Mellon University looked at whether classroom displays affected children’s ability to maintain focus during instruction and to learn the lesson content. They found that children in highly decorated classrooms were more distracted, spent more time off-task and demonstrated smaller learning gains than when the decorations were removed.

Rode (2022) posits: The Journal of Experimental Child Psychology that gave a group of students two cognitive tasks to complete: one in a highly-decorated classroom and one in a bare-bones classroom. Overall, the students did better surrounded by blank walls, which flew in the face of what teachers had been told for years. The study concluded that too many visual stimulants could overload a child’s brain and get in the way of their learning.

These studies are the anchorage of the new order from the department. Yet, there are those who repel change since most of us want to stay in our comfort zones. And to protect us from being pulled out of our comfortable areas, we react since we fear that we would be rejected and we dislike doing things rather than those we are comfortable with.

But then again, education is dynamic. It is a continuum. We as educators cannot just sit and allow things to happen. We are there to cope since we vowed to educate our learners.

Also, we are happy embracing these changes since we are grateful enough to have jobs which we consider as meaningful. Without the meaning in it, we can NEVER be motivated to work since we only see the comfort side of it.

Yes, we are there to TEACH. But other professions also prepare their tools prior to their main work. Scientifically, work is defined as Force multiplied by Distance. If we do not exert effort using force with movements, then what are we being paid to do?