Making the grade
11:03
pm | Monday, June 17th, 2013
118 435 288
Quacquarelli Symonds, a
British organization specializing in education, confirms what most of us pretty
much know or suspect. The quality of our education is falling.
Proof of which is that
even as our economy is getting better, our schools are getting worse. Only the
University of the Philippines remained among the top 100 of 300 schools in
Asia. Ateneo de Manila University, De La Salle University and the University of
Santo Tomas, though still in the middle ranges, slipped during the past year.
Specifically, UP improved from 68th to 67th while Ateneo fell from 86th to
109th, La Salle from 142th to 151th, and UST from 140th to 150th.
Rep. Luz Ilagan, a
former university professor, says this is due to schools preferring quantity to
quality. Many universities are really just diploma mills offering popular
courses based on public demand. Poor-quality elementary and high school
education lead to poor-quality students entering college. Some of them have
barely passable comprehension and writing skills.
Rep. Antonio Tinio says
it’s funds, or the sore lack of them. “In Asia, public universities rule. In
order for our higher education sector to become competitive, the government
must drastically step up its funding and other support for our state
universities and colleges. Unfortunately, government higher education policy
over the last two decades has gone in the other direction, towards budget cuts,
contractualization of faculty and commercialization.”
Ric Reyes of the Freedom
from Debt Coalition puts the case of lack of funds for public education more
forcefully. Last year, the budget for debt payments was P739 billion, three
times more than the budget for education, which was only P224.9 billion. The
latter was only 2.2 percent of GNP, well below the world benchmark of 6
percent. Unesco notes that the Philippines has the lowest expenditure for
education in proportion to total budget. Since 1955, education has dropped from
30.78 percent of the budget to 15 percent post Edsa. This year’s education
budget at 14.97 percent is lower than the post Edsa average of 15 percent.
I share their sense of
apprehension, if not alarm, at the state, and future, of our education. With
some caveats.
Certainly, I agree that
we need to revise the budget and give education the utmost, ultimate,
first-and-last priority it deserves. Which, not quite incidentally, the
Constitution decrees. Debt payments are not the national priority, education
is. Which, not quite incidentally as well, shows the continuing horror of
martial law: To this day we are still paying for the Marcoses’ debt. Next time
Imelda throws a party, know that you and your children are paying for it.
I don’t care if
government makes all sorts of excuses to defer payment (“Sorry, but we have
mouths to feed and minds to open”), or more conciliatorily negotiates to
restructure payments again and again, but education should be three times more
than debt payments. Hell, education should have half the budget, if we are
going to have half the chance to curb, if not eradicate, poverty.
That brings me again to
wonder at the wisdom of pouring a fortune into military upgrading to meet the
Chinese threat in the Spratlys instead of doing that to education to meet the
far more grievous, the far more terrifying, the far clearer and more present
threat of ignorance and illiteracy.
My caveat is plugging
for universal education as the thrust of education and not just improving the
quality of higher education. I myself don’t greatly mind that our universities
aren’t gaining rave reviews for their brilliance. But I do mind that the
majority of the population of this country is mired in ignorance, and often enough
illiteracy. In the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao alone, 21 percent of
barangays have no schools. That is unacceptable. There is an urgent need to
pour enormous amounts to educate as many of this country’s kids, if not all of
them, as possible.
Which means, as I said
in a previous column, conscripting the private sector to the task. Which means
luring big business, foundations, foreign aid-givers, philanthropic
organizations, and whatever else you can find, to the task. Indeed, which means
inspiring volunteers, the ones abundantly found during disasters and People
Power, to the task. We need a foundation to build education on. Literacy is
such a foundation. The three ’Rs are such a foundation. Universal education is
such a foundation.
A foundation for better
things—including raising the quality of higher education.
This is one case where
quantity truly translates into quality. I do not believe that improving the
quality of higher education will impact on universal education, or literacy.
What it is more likely to do is widen the gap between the educated and the
uneducated, the lettered and the unlettered. What I believe is the opposite:
Universal education, or literacy will impact tremendously on the quality of
higher education. You create a mass of literate people and the discourse of
this country will improve. You create a better discourse in this country and
the quality of the culture will improve. You raise the culture of this country
and the quality of education will improve.
You will create the
need, the demand, the imperative for education to improve. The push will not
come from above, it will come from below. People who have glimpsed the vistas
that being able to read and write opens will want to see more. People who have
known the wonders that the light of learning brings will want to have more.
People who have tasted the joys that enlightenment brings will want to push
their boundaries more. Not immediately, not even in the short run, but it will
happen, slowly and surely. The push will come from below, the swell will come
from below.
That is what it takes to
improve the quality of education. That is what it takes to make the grade.
Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/54787/making-the-grade#ixzz2WlD1rVcI
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