#OPINION | In Pursuit of Excellence: Is It Worth It?
by Benji Jacob and Lauren Fernandez
Our calls for an academic break were answered — but many students still question if the week given to us can be considered one.
Productivity has always been one of the most important driving forces of success. However, the prevailing notion of toxic productivity has done more harm than good to both students and teachers, especially within the Pisay community. In fact, this issue has been prevalent enough that it became a trend in social media.
Last October 18, 2020, a Twitter user began a cry from Pisay students across the PSHS System (PSHSS) with #PisayGiveUsABreak. The hashtag started trending on Twitter within just twelve hours. As of October 20, 2020 at 10:00 AM, the hashtag has been tweeted over 14,000 times. This revealed numerous issues about the students’ lives inside and outside the virtual classroom.
Many students spoke of how the workload was detrimental to their already unhealthy sleep schedules and how they skipped meals just to finish requirements. Others shared their experiences with taking breaks, which only led to the guilt in not doing their requirements instead. Another student talked about having environments that were not conducive to self-learning.
With all the chaos that is happening in this online setting, scholars pleaded with the PSHSS administration to, first and foremost, set aside a week for an academic break. As the hashtag grew, the call for a reduction in requirement workload emerged. This would provide students and teachers alike more time and opportunities to recover from burnout and focus on themselves and others.
The academic break we need
On October 20, Director Lawrence Madriaga posted an announcement in the Pisay Direct Facebook group that an academic break will take place from October 29 to November 6. During this time period, modules and learning guides will still be released, but there would be no synchronous meetings, requirements, and graded activities. Submissions due this week would be rescheduled and students could use this time to read and understand the material.
Providing an academic break is commendable as this could be an avenue for students to take a step back and enjoy the lives that they have outside of school. The academic break that was announced will already help improve our mental and physical health, since we can rest for an extended period of time.
In fact, many Pisay students appreciate the breaks that their respective campuses have given them. However, we still want to advocate for a more sustainable, long-term option: reducing the number of requirements.
Why is this solution sustainable?
We have to value time as a finite resource: everyone is either at an advantage or disadvantage when it comes to the time that they have. Slotting a week-long academic break once per quarter may be beneficial but not feasible due to class suspensions and problems with modifying the academic calendar to include resting periods.
The one-week academic break would also require a system-wide policy in order to create a synchronous academic calendar. Making policies for requirements would be easier since the regulations could already be campus-wide to cater to the different needs of the students.
Students are undergoing many problems that are only exacerbated by this online setting, and toxic productivity is the most prevalent among these. By limiting the number of requirements, the academic pressure that one experiences would be alleviated since there would be either more time to study the modules provided, or less activities that a student has to worry about.
Reducing the workload would provide more breathing room for students when the pressure is lifted off of them. In a study conducted by Benson et. al. (2000), results showed that exposure to a more relaxed curriculum led to better work ethics and academic scores. This gives more time for extracurricular activities, seminars, and leisure.
While Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays are designated non-academic days, these are still used by students to catch up on requirements. This obstructs us from the luxury of a weekend’s rest due to the absence of a barrier between academic and personal life.
By giving students more room to breathe, we break the monotony of the week. This allows students to re-energize themselves and allot time for hobbies, catch up on requirements without new activities adding to the list, and even study lessons in advance. Overall, this improves the mental and physical health of students through an avenue outside of academics.
Taking breaks is commonly treated as a luxury caused by the existing hustle culture mindset, which affects everyone to some extent, whether they are good in time management or not. It is also unjustifiable that people have to give up other parts of your routine such as leisure, and even sleeping and having meals, at the expense of doing requirements.
While the week-long academic break can have most of these advantages, lightening the workload would spread this week’s worth of rest all throughout the academic year. However, the PSHS System’s response to the call for the one week break means that they are aware of this, and that they are willing to address it.
Present efforts and problems
The PSHSS is not ignoring the struggles that its students are facing. From the bridging program up until now, they have been hard at work, gathering everyone’s comments on the online learning system. While they seek to improve the Learning Management System (LMS) and other tangible aspects, they do not seem to consider the intangible aspects of learning: the stress, demotivation, and others.
The PSHSS also attempts to introduce students to seminars about mental health, time management, and life skills. However, many students opt to not attend them to have time for requirements. While this might be effective in the short run for those who can attend, this is just a band-aid solution that would not be as powerful as implementing and offering opportunities for the community to apply what they have learned.
It is important to note that the hashtag is aimed not only at the students, but also the teachers. One of the advantages of online classes is its leniency for deadlines. Students benefit from this, and having no deductions for late submission allows them to read and understand the modules more. However, teachers would have more requirements to check in a smaller time frame.
Our teachers should be included in the academic break. According to the announcement, the week-long break may be used by teachers to adjust the modules and learning guides. While this would help students, teachers deserve a period of rest as well for the same reasons students do.
The PSHSS management has provided their best efforts, but what other issues do we still have to overcome?
The PSHS-MC Handbook cites that any schoolwide proposal can be approved when more than 50% of the student population votes on it. This would then be amended once the administration ratifies it. Based on the abundance of tweets and pleas for a break, this is a campus-wide issue at best. Considering that this is a system-wide call, this has to be brought up to the Board of Trustees (BOT). However, this proposal will continue to be a far cry without any student representation.
Despite these issues, however, the PSHS System has responded to them and is working to resolve them. The initial call for an academic break has been addressed. Some campuses have discussed and planned an academic break before the hashtag launched, while others responded to the community’s concerns after the hashtag trended.
The Zamboanga Peninsula Region Campus, Southern Mindanao Campus, CALABARZON Campus, Central Visayas Campus, Central Luzon Campus, Cordillera Administrative Region Campus, Main Campus, Ilocos Region Campus, Western Visayas Campus, Eastern Visayas Campus, Cagayan Valley Campus, SOCCSKSARGEN Region Campus, Bicol Region Campus, Caraga Region Campus, and Central Mindanao Campus have responded to the pleas of the students by giving an academic break. In fact, #PisayGaveUsABreak went trending last October 20, 2020 at around 8:00 PM, proving that many students appreciate the responses of their respective campus administrators.
The approval of an academic break is our first breakthrough and stepping stone to achieve better working conditions for both teachers and students. If we are able to achieve this, that would mean that we are capable of advocating and calling for the change that we need and deserve.
Moving forward
An airtight solution to the overload of requirements is to alleviate workaholism in addition to an academic break. While it may not completely solve the damaging effects of toxic productivity to one’s mental health, it would immensely reduce the stress placed on students and teachers.
Toxic productivity has taken its toll on us all, and it is incredibly hard to tell where to draw the line between school and home — especially given our current learning environment. In order to solve this crisis, we must raise our voices and speak up. We must strive to find that balance between our academic and personal lives, but how can we achieve this if we are not given enough time?
Online classes are one of the best ways to keep students educated during this time in the pandemic. But if we are being engineered to become machines doing requirements non-stop every single day instead of being taught to change the future for the better, is our education really worth it?
