Unesco to help rid textbooks of errors

The UNESCO National Commission of the Philippines (UNACOM) is now coordinating with the Department of Education (DepEd) to make sure that textbooks used by public school students will not be error-riddled and will have better content, especially in Social Studies and Health Education subjects.

Former health secretary Dr. Jaime Galvez-Tan, who led a UNACOM commissioned team to review textbooks in public schools, said that among the steps the UNESCO will take is a workshop with textbook publishers and authors in the country.

The discussion will include the defective textbooks published in the past years and the plan to come out with a “resource book” for teachers.

“We’re making a new book, a resource book for teachers. We will also hold a workshop with the publishers and book authors to guide them, so that the errors will not be repeated,” Galvez-Tan said.

Galvez-Tan was one of the speakers in a UNESCO-organized media breakfast forum at the Ristorante La Dolce Fontana in Greenhills, San Juan, with the theme “Behavioral Transformation of Filipinos Today.”

The guest of honor was Pierre Sane, the assistant director general of UNESCO in Paris, France.

Galvez-Tan earlier admitted that the UNACOM textbook review team had confirmed the reported poor quality of textbooks being used in public schools after a thorough study.

It was learned that UNACOM’s initiative to review the textbooks was primarily aimed at screening their content in social studies and health education.

To gauge the quality of the content, Tan said the evaluators examined the accuracy, comprehensiveness, appropriateness, organization, presentation, integrity and consistency, sensitivity, balance, and readability of the textbooks.