MANILA, Philippines—Amid the grim education scenario in the Philippines, a bright light shines from the remote town of Jagna in Bohol province.
There, husband and wife Christopher Bernido and Ma. Victoria Carpio-Bernido, both physicists, introduced a way of teaching and learning that has produced amazing results.
More than a decade ago, they left their academic careers at the University of the Philippines (UP) and went back to a rural setting to run a struggling school and help students achieve their academic potentials.
Their efforts catapulted them to national and international attention and became a source of inspiration.
The Bernidos were among seven awardees honored Tuesday by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation in ceremonies at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.
The Bernidos were recognized for “their purposeful commitment to both science and nation, ensuring innovative, low-cost and effective basic education even under Philippine conditions of great scarcity and daunting poverty.”
The Bernidos are among 42 Filipinos whom the foundation has honored since the awards began in 1958.
Chris, 53, is from Bohol while Marivic, 48, is from Naga City in Camarines Sur province. They finished at UP and earned their doctorate degrees in physics from the State University of New York. They both taught at the UP National Institute of Physics, where they met and fell in love.
Now, Chris said in an interview, “we have 490 children”—a reference to the students in their care.
For the country
The Bernidos surprised their UP colleagues in 1999 when they packed their bags and moved to Jagna, where Chris’ mother was running a small school, Central Visayan Institute Foundation (CVIF).
Closing down CVIF would have been the easier option but Chris and Marivic accepted the challenge of running the school. Chris became its president and Marivic the principal.
“It was Marivic who was sugod (gung-ho),” Chris laughed.
“Then things became difficult,” Marivic recalled. “I lost a lot of weight.”
But giving up was not in the couple’s vocabulary. Marivic said: “For us, it has always been the bigger picture, the country. We both wanted to do something for the country.”
At CVIF, students are honed to excel in academics, in science especially, and to be well-rounded individuals with good values.
Revolutionary method
In 2002, the Bernidos designed and introduced a revolutionary way of teaching called the CVIF Dynamic Learning Program (DLP).
“It limits teacher participation by devoting 70 percent of class time to student-driven activities built around clear learning targets, aided by well-designed learning plans and performance tracking tools,” the Bernidos said in a lecture paper.
CVIF uses a “parallel classes” scheme that needs only one expert teacher aided by facilitators. The Bernidos wanted to show that poverty is not an excuse for poor teaching and for not excelling in academics.
No notebooks, no homework
Their students, many of them poor, performed well in national scholastic aptitude and college admission tests. Soon many educators wanted to see for themselves how CVIF did things. Two Nobel laureates came to visit.
Where in the world does one find a school where students are not required to have notebooks and do not have homework? Only this side of Bohol.
“The students use activity sheets, instead,” Marivic said. “They don’t need notebooks and they go home without the burden of homework.”
It was difficult to imagine how students learned through the use of activity sheets and with minimum teacher intervention until the Bernidos spoke about neurons in the brain, biophysics and neurodynamics that are involved in the learning process.
“We are not dealing with machines,” they said.
Poverty not a barrier
In 2006, the Bernidos launched the Learning Physics as One Nation (LPON) program to address the shortage of physics teachers.
The Bernidos present three main learning problems that could be addressed: teacher problem, textbook problem and science lab problem. They believe that “poverty and scarcity are not barriers to quality education.”
The couple ask: “Can high school students learn essential physics effectively even if their classroom teacher has little or no physics training?” Yes, the LPON pilot study results showed.
The programs include learning activities to be individually accomplished by the students plus weekly video lectures featuring expert teachers. “Teacher-expert” and “student-expert” interaction happens in real time through e-mail and text messaging.
Their solution to the textbook problem: “Pick a select team of experts that could conceptualize and design concise learning ... Only one copy per class is needed because the students will copy by hand the material from the board or screen.
And the science lab problem? “We believe that there is no need for expensive labs in high school. The simple pendulum could be used for scientific experimentation, analysis and inference-making. So select cheap and simple set-ups to demonstrate fundamental principles of science.”
Not science only
Science is not all the Bernidos want their students to excel in. Students are exposed to the arts such as music and theater.
“We stage plays, we make the students listen to Bach … We also want them to know about the lives of saints. Oh, they like Jean d’Arc very much,” Marivic said.
Unlike some scientists who are agnostics or atheists, she and her spouse find no conflict between science and their faith, Marivic said.
She and Chris draw inspiration from the lives of the saints.
“St. Therese of the Child Jesus teaches us that little things done with great love have great merits. There are many opportunities to practice this while working in a small, poor school in a remote place,” she said.
From the Rule of St. Benedict, Marivic has drawn insights on leadership and management, while the works of St. Bonaventure has helped her relate being a physicist to theological thoughts.
“We are able to find contact points between what we witness in our scientific work and what we believe in as Catholics—a living personal and infinitely creative God,” she said.
Marivic wears the distinctive Lourdes habit—a white dress with a blue sash—every time she goes to Church on Sunday. She has been doing it for 37 years.
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