Doubts will hound every student we pass this school year

Let me repeat that. Every student enrolled this never-mind-the-coronavirus-school year will pass. Education secretary Leonor Briones did not say it. Neither did she guarantee it. But when she said "delaying further the resumption of school would be harmful to children who risk being left behind by their counterparts in Southeast Asia" it is difficult to derive any other meaning than that her main consideration is keeping pace with the others.

If I remember correctly, this was the same consideration that drove the previous administration into forcing the implementation of the K to 12 program, never mind if at the time of its forced implementation, everything in the system was not ready for it. Facilities were lacking, no teachers were qualified to teach the new curriculum, and the new curriculum took the students nowhere. And all because we were the only ones with no senior high.

Just as I had no objection to having a senior high to be with the rest of the world except for the hasty and forced implementation of K to 12, I also have no objection to keeping pace with our counterparts in Asia. But the problem is, we can only keep pace chronologically. We can only match, step by step, their timetables but never the quality of their education. We placed dead last in reading, math, and science in some recent survey, remember?

And because our educational system is a laggard even in the best of times, nothing in these pandemic-rapped, home-quarantined times inspires me to even be cautiously optimistic that our students will gain something worthy of honest promotion to the next grade level. My big fear is that, promotion being almost certain (we do not want to be left behind by our neighbors, right?), we will be advancing mostly blanks, if you know what I mean.

We will just be kicking the can down the road. For as long as we can keep our school calendars and academic timetables, who cares about what we produce. Garbage in, garbage it seems out does not apply in the topsy-turvy world of COVID. Besides, it is no longer the problem of DepEd how our graduates fare when they take their professional licensure exams or qualifying tests for real world jobs.

What I find truly amazing in these depressing times is how DepEd managed to find the confidence and the enthusiasm that its "blended approach" to teaching will work. To repeat, we placed dead last in reading, math, and science in the best of times. Now we have a pandemic, we are quarantined, many are hungry, there is no money, only fear in the air, and in school we are experimenting. And all we care about is keeping pace.

Not only are we hampered by the uneven distribution, availability, and access to resources for distance learning, but I am particularly concerned about having to bring in parents as partners and/or replacement of teachers in teaching so-called modules in distance learning. Remember --not all parents are equal. Many have not even reached the grade levels of their own kids. Clearly we are making do with what we clearly cannot do.

Glancing over our shoulders and keeping tabs on the neighbors is not the right thing to do, especially in these times of great crises. We all have been reduced to our bare minimums. We are on our own so let us do what is right for us. If our neighbors do good, good for them. If they do bad, how foolish of us to allow ourselves to fall with them. And we are just talking of school. Do not forget, there is the virus still. In fact, the virus most of all.