Education As It Is, Is Education Nonetheless

WENDELL GLENN P. CAGAPE, MAFS FOR:

COLUMN

November 19, 2007

Education as it is, is education nonetheless

Looking for answers to the perennial questions of why education is going down the drain in the Philippines in spite of government interventions and other donor countries’ commitment towards its improvement and upliftment is a challenging and hard undertaking. In our class at the La Salle University, we have been discussing measurement and evaluation in education- considered to be one of the tools that validates the standards and the manner pupils and students achieve it. Discussions in our class led one to the other to the growing concern of the poor quality of Philippine educational system. Many, I believed, are searching for the Holy Grail in addressing the issues affecting education and arresting its downward spiral decay.

As I argued in the past, I stand on my opinion that the quality of education of this country of ours is affected by the kind of teachers teaching in the public basic education sector. The private education sector need not be mentioned because, obviously, they have been taking the cudgel of quality education in behalf of the public sector. I say this because, the small percentage of pupils and students who are successful in their tertiary education graduated in many of our public schools however majority of those who succeeded and are in graduate schools are products of private schools when they are still in their elementary schooling. Even in primary schooling, many privately-run kindergartens and primary schools are overshadowing public schools in terms of quality graduates.

I observed that in the Philippine public education sector, we have the propensity to produce more and neglected quality. We pride ourselves of the many graduates we produce however, looking at their capacity to hurdle further educational opportunities, comes the problem. Many, in fact, in our elementary schools are cuddling or pampering their pupils although the rudiments of basic education should have been seriously thought. We tend to give our pupils easy questions and easy examinations, less assignments and allow them to pass even if they do not possess the necessary skills to hurdle

higher education. Worse, we even graduate them if they can not even read and write good essay or reflection papers. We always reasoned out that it is fine to allow these pupils to pass through elementary schooling because anyway, they will acquire learning skills in secondary and eventually, in tertiary education. This is wrong, very wrong. Logically speaking, how can a pupil who can not even compute basic math, read Basic English prose and comprehend lessons be expected to hurdle the rigorous academic requirements of higher education? They usually end up dropping out of school because they can not compete with the rest of the class. This is pitiful because when this happens, teacher factor comes into question. We hate pointing fingers, but I truly believed that all excellent and exceptionally talented teachers should go to the basic education sector. In tertiary education, we considered faculty members as experts in their own field wherein they will dispense expert knowledge to students, not the contrary. In reality, even in tertiary level education, faculty needs to teach basic knowledge because the students coming into our system are not ready to take the rudiments of a college or university education.

This perhaps, results from cultural practices among us Filipinos. In our family, only those whose IQ are very exceptionally high are asked to pursue law, medicine, engineering, architecture, business, sciences and social studies. Those with less IQ are asked to enroll in education. Parents tend to discourage their brightest children in pursuing education and this is adversely affecting the manner our basic education sector is manned. I am, like those who are ahead of me, fortunate because our teachers in kindergarten and primary school are the best- if not, they are exceptionally talented. Now, I can not really tell because I have not observed actual classroom instruction but the results through their pupils are reasons enough to infer that there is indeed going wrong in the system.

The problem besetting Philippine basic education is not corruption and graft, it is the manner teachers are managing instructions and their policy in producing graduates. I would rather that my elementary school produces fewer graduates but of quality than producing more in quantity but they can not hurdle the academic challenges that lies ahead. I said the best and the talented teachers should go to basic education because formative education starts in kindergarten, primary and elementary schooling and not in tertiary schooling. It starts from when the child acquires knowledge not during the time they come to college or university. Quality education has to ensure that quantity is not necessarily quality. This, I think is the perennial problem that we have to faced. I suggest that the Department of Education encourages their teachers to pursue graduate studies for them to be able to contribute to quality education. I salute the teachers who did very well to alleviate and

respond to quality education because there are a good number of them in DepEd but we wanted to see more of them to effect quality change and to sustainably respond to the call of quality education.