Dr. Christopher Bernido and Dr. Ma. Victoria Carpio-Bernido make a formidable team. Physicists, Researchers, Educators, the Bernido couple are blazing a trail towards a new way of educating this country. Based in Bohol, they have launched a program called: “Learning Physics as a Nation”. Here’s an excerpt from the UP Los Banos website:

The research center they founded has been hosting physics workshops every three years, drawing experts from all over the world including two winners of the Nobel Prize for Physics, Gerard t’Hooft and Frank Wilczek. The international workshops have been connecting departments of physics in the Philippines with that of the global community, giving faculty and graduate students the chance to network with fellow scientists abroad.

The innovative, “Learning Physics as a Nation” is beginning to revolutionize high school education in the country, with over 30 high schools in different provinces of Regions 1 to 12, ARMM, CAR, Caraga and NCR already using it. It supported by the Fund for Assistance to Private Education (FAPE) with a special grant from the Department of Education.

Under the program, lectures are only 20 minutes, individual or group work is 40 minutes and students, who come from very poor families, have no homework so they can still do chores and have family time. After eight years, their students have began passing the UP College Entrance Exam.

They addressed a grassroots issue, and had the courage to blaze new science trails in their home province of Bohol, in isolated and marginalized communities, demonstrating that there are no constraints or limits to achieving the lofty vision of “building a nation” when courage, commitment and intellectual excellence are applied to the task.

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