She still doesn‘t get it

I can’t believe Education Secretary Leonor Briones still doesn’t get it. Given that this is likely her last position in her government service career, she has nothing more to fear or protect. She should be able to tell it like it is.

But no. She is taking all the observations about the crisis state of our educational system personally. She shouldn’t because everyone knows that what happened here is like a train crash in slow motion. All administrations before Duterte’s share the blame.

“I don’t know who should judge whether we have a crisis in education or not, or kung sabihin na we have a crisis in education saan nanggaling ang crisis in education after 123 years? After 47 secretaries of Education, after seven secretaries of Education who refused to participate in the international assessment,” Briones said in a meeting with President Duterte on Monday night, July 12.

Hay naku! Sec. Liling is going ballistic on the peripheral issues and avoiding the obvious: that we have a serious education crisis… that the public school system is not educating our young people well enough to get them a fighting chance to have a good life.

Yes, Sec. Liling should be commended for being the first Education secretary in two decades to be brave enough to participate in an international assessment of how our elementary and secondary students are faring. Now we know the dismal score, the next step is to do something about it.

The Education secretary also bared that the Philippines has a debt of over $1 billion to fund the education system. Precisely because we are investing quite a bit on education, we ought to get a report from DepEd on how the money is being productively spent.

But the first item in the agenda is to admit that there is an obvious crisis, so anyone who tries to deny it seems to be existing in another dimension.

Dr. Jose Ramon Albert, who formerly headed our national statistics office, had this comment on Facebook:

“The education sector, especially basic education, is in crisis but yet there is no admission of the crisis existing. In fairness, this crisis is not purely the fault of the current administration as there are historical circumstances that made things as bad as they are now.

“What I find disturbing is that all politicians and the public are so silent about this crisis.”

The ADB Institute also cited the same problems in the Philippines’ education sector that were noted by the World Bank.

Based on the PSA data gathered in 2003, 2013 and 2019 used by the ADBI paper showed that “a substantial share of Grade 10 students still do not have foundational mathematics or reading skills. This shows that like many countries, the amount of learning produced for each year of schooling in the Philippines is very low,” ADBI said.

ADBI noted that the decline “corroborated the TIMSS results.” But “different from TIMSS, … we determined that the decline between 2013 and 2019 was four times as severe compared to the decline between 2003 and 2013,” ADBI said, referring to the math results.

Sounds alarming, in any language. The official hullabaloo about the World Bank breaking protocol is not as important as the worrisome message the published studies conveyed.

But let us hear what the ordinary citizens think. Two emails to me provide a good idea. The first is from Godofredo Bamba, a schoolmate of Sec. Briones at Torres High School.

“Dear Boo, you again hit the nail on the head with the DepEd problem. Its organization, its system, its operation, its methodology, they stink.

“In our days, in the early 50s in high school (Sec. Briones is just one or two years ahead of us in Torres High School) we had perfect curricula covering all relevant subjects.

“Modesty aside, all student graduates have a good grasp of appropriate learning in all aspects, math and science included. Students were ready to face the world. College is the next step toward career pursuit.

“One more thing, most of us students in public schools come from poor families. In our class alone in 1955, there were 45 sections that graduated, roughly more than 2,000 students.

“Practically all of these students never spent money for all their textbooks covering all subjects, from music to world history. Assuming there are 10 subjects, that means 10 textbooks. Quite a bundle indeed.

“Those books were properties of the school and were loaned only to students to be returned before graduation. The books were mostly printed in the US and very durable. They are used over and over again over the years.

“These days the textbooks are merely workbooks that need to be written on and become worthless upon graduation. No wonder education is so expensive nowadays. The genius that conceptualized this system made millions for himself/herself and the printer, year in, year out. Boo, we are indeed a country in the intensive care section.”

And here is another comment from Maria Rennie Favorito on another aspect of the crisis.

“I read your article about feeding the children first and I agree 100 percent. Hunger has been the number one problem of the public school teachers here in Bicol. Most often they have to feed the poorest in their classes from their own pockets just so they will have the energy to attend the classes.

“I hope our government will really have a feeding program that will benefit the poorest of the poor.

“As to the Philippine Science High School graduates and scholars teaching math and science in public schools, I think it’s a laudable idea. It is just and proper that they should render service.

“I know for a fact that most science high school scholars come from well off families and they are the majority. Can’t blame them really because they have the edge passing the entrance tests coming from private schools…”

There is an education crisis, Sec. Liling. And we want to know what DepEd is doing about it.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco