To Educate as Equals: Rethinking Learning Beyond Hierarchies

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For generations, Filipinos have been told that education is a ladder. At the top, we imagine scholars, professors, and policy-makers; at the bottom, the so-called “masa” who, in this narrative, must be taught, trained, and uplifted. But this vision of education—as a hierarchy where one stands above and another below—is both flawed and dangerous.

To “educate” is not to stand higher. It is to stand beside.

The very word only feels heavy when we attach power to it, when we imagine classrooms as miniature kingdoms, with one voice commanding while the rest are compelled to listen. But true education has never been about domination. It has always been a circle: endless, equal, and shared.

The Knowledge of the Streets and Fields

Take the jeepney driver. Each day, he navigates Metro Manila’s chaos with a mastery that no academic lecture can duplicate. He reads the rhythm of the road like music—anticipating the pulse of traffic, negotiating with other drivers through hand gestures and headlights, and understanding the psychology of passengers squeezed into narrow benches. That knowledge, borne of experience, is not inferior to a professor’s theory. It is its own kind of brilliance, a testament to resilience, patience, and the art of survival in a city that often feels designed to crush its people.

Or consider the farmer. Beneath his sun-worn hands lies a wisdom far older than the universities that too often overlook him. He knows the secrets of the soil: when to plant, when to harvest, when the rains will come, and when the sky is lying. He is a living archive of sustainability, carrying techniques refined through centuries. And yet, in a society that prizes diplomas, his knowledge is dismissed as “uneducated.” How ironic that the very people who feed the nation are treated as if they have nothing to teach.

And then there is the quiet observer—the ordinary Filipino who, without titles or degrees, sees politics and economics with piercing clarity. He might be a vendor, a tricycle driver, a housewife scrolling through the news after a long day. But his insights, sharpened by lived reality rather than policy papers, can cut to the truth more quickly than a panel of experts ever could. What he lacks is not intelligence, but the platform to be heard.

Breaking the Myth of Superiority

None of these truths make one person “better” than another. They only remind us that wisdom does not live in ivory towers alone. It dwells in markets, in rice fields, in jeepneys, in classrooms, in barangay halls, in conversations under nipa huts and in debates across social media threads.

The illusion of hierarchy—the idea that some knowledge is “higher” and some “lower”—is what keeps us divided. It is the same illusion that politicians exploit when they call the masses “bobo” for electing the wrong leaders, while forgetting that elite decisions have often failed the people just as badly.

The reality is simple: we all hold fragments of truth. What I know, I share—not to claim superiority, but to return the gift of learning. What others know, I receive—not as a student beneath a teacher, but as an equal in a lifelong exchange.

Education as a Shared Rising

When we redefine education as equality, it ceases to be about who leads and who follows. Instead, it becomes a collective rising. Teachers learn from their students. Farmers teach scientists. Jeepney drivers teach urban planners. Communities teach governments. And in return, knowledge flows back—renewed, refined, and relevant.

Education, in its truest form, was never about hierarchy. It was about humanity. It was about how we rise—not as individuals climbing a ladder—but as a people holding hands in a circle, lifting one another so no one is left behind.

In the end, to educate is not to dictate. It is to listen, to share, to stand together. Because the wisdom of the Philippines does not live in a single classroom, but in the everyday lives of its people. And until we honor that truth, we will never truly rise as one.

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