RICOCHET: Philippine education – a perspective
BY: RENE BARTOLO
POSTED: JUNE 10, 2013 1:55 AM
POSTED: JUNE 10, 2013 1:55 AM
IN 1900, the Schurmann Commission which
ran the affairs of government under the Philippine. Commonwealth established in
the country a system of free, public, compulsory, and universal education. The
system, patterned after the American model, was implemented all over the islands,
with instructions conducted in English.To implement the educational system,
American teachers were recruited. The first batch of 500 teachers arrived in
the country in August 1901. They were called the Thomasites, after the ship
that brought them over to our shores.
The Filipino children of those years
began education with four years of primary grades. They were taught basic
academic subjects – reading, writing, arithmetic, and social sciences —
together with a program for moral and physical improvement.
The four-year primary grades were
followed by three years of elementary education and another four years of high
school.
It speaks well of the educational
system of that time that, after 11 years of primary, elementary and high school
education, the high school graduate was qualified to teach in the primary
and elementary grades.
Teaching then was a dignified and
highly-respected profession and teachers were among the highest paid in the
land. They received a monthly salary of 20 pesos and, at a time when the
exchange rate was two pesos to one US dollar and a sack of rice cost 20
centavos, it was a handsome pay indeed.
The public school system was so
successful that by 1935, the Philippines was among the most literate countries
in the world, with higher literacy rate than all Asian countries and 35 others,
including China , Russia and Mexico .
“Public school” was not a derogatory
name then; it did not leave a bad taste in the mouth. Much water has passed
under the bridge in the 10 decades since the introduction into the country of
the public school system. Today, the water is murky, very murky.
The phrase “public school” has since
taken a disreputable connotation, especially in the last five decades.
The quality of education has taken a
nose-dive in inverse proportion to the escalating number of graduates that
schools throw out into the world each year.
Our schools have become diploma mills,
churning out assembly-line graduates from the elementary grades, high school,
and even college. Except for a few established and expensive “name” schools,
even private schools have made their curricula cheap commercial conduits that
process practical illiterates into functional illiterates.
What I mean to say is this: Schools
take in students for the tuition fees they spend; pass them on to teachers who
barely teach; mulct them of their parents’ money for years; and then release
them to the competitive world as graduates who cannot properly function because
they are virtual illiterates.
The Department of Education has allowed
for decades two highly questionable practices: unqualified and mentally
handicapped teachers who teach our young; and schools that pretend to give
education without the rudiments of educational materials and equipment.
We have debated for years the causes
for the deterioration of the country’s educational system.
To my mind, the reasons are simple. We
have a preponderance of teachers who do not care to teach, students who do not
care to learn, and an educational system that does not give a damn at all.
And every time a new education
secretary takes the helm, the system is overhauled. Take for example the
so-called “bridge” system.
Proponents claim that the quality of
education has plunged to an all-time low and that we need to salvage our
elementary school graduates by increasing by one year the elementary
curriculum. We need to resuscitate the 7th Grade, the proponents say.
They say elementary school graduates
have been found lacking in the basics of education: reading, writing,
arithmetic and the sciences. So we need to add another year.
The argument is fallacious. How can we
teach in one year what has not been learned in six years? By analogy, one
cannot remove the termites by adding another story to the house.
Do not make the pupils stay another
year in school. That will not solve the problem. That will exacerbate the
physical problem of education – school buildings, classrooms and books – and
the manpower problem: teachers who know how to teach.
Even the tutorship being proposed by
some sectors will not solve the problem either. You cannot pound into a head
callused by years of negligent and lousy teaching lessons that it failed to
grasp in six years.
If it really cared, if it was not
preoccupied by material things like money on the side, the Department of
Education should have attacked the problem at its very roots.
And now we have new leadership at the
helm of the DepEd and the K+12 system that rolled off this year and we have
high hopes and new expectations..
Still, the primary way to ensure
quality education is to develop quality teachers.
The government should take a direct
hand in training the teachers of this country. Do not leave that crucial work
to diploma mills. These disreputable schools are not interested in molding
quality teachers; they are only interested in the tuition the parents pay.
Educate the educators. Let our teachers
be the prime example of what education means.
Educare: “To lead out of…”
Education is leading the child out of
the darkness of ignorance to the light of knowledge.
And the blind cannot lead the
blind. (For comments and reactions, e-mail: rene_bartolo@yahoo.com)
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