Reference: Raymond Palatino, Vice President, Anak ng Bayan Youth
Party
THE DEPARTMENT of Education must be reminded that most developed
countries were able to lift the standards of their education through
an enormous funding program for the public school system and an
aggressive rallying of citizens' support.
DepEd's Bridge Program must have been inspired by the 'No Child
is Left Behind' program of the United States or the 'Back to the
Basics' curriculum of Canada arguing the same goals of school accountability
and raising of academic standards. But while we share similar designs
in teaching methodology, course content and testing devices, we
sorely lack infrastructure and logistics support to make the program
effective.
In other countries, aside from implementing reform measures in
education, there are enough classrooms, modules and teachers to
make learning productive. Students are given free lunches, transportation,
uniform and sometimes, even living allowance to motivate them to
study. Teachers receive sufficient pay, undergo continuing training
and relieved of many administrative and non-teaching tasks like
helping in the elections.
It would be difficult to rally public support for the Bridge Program
if DepEd would continue, by implication, blame teachers and students
for the country's low performance in math and science while ignoring
the unhappy learning environment in schools or malnutrition as factors
for the dismal state of our education. DepEd should be the leading
agency decrying the misprioritization of the national budget instead
of glossing this fact as the main culprit for our current woes in
education.
DepEd must also rethink its overdependence on standardized examinations
in assessing students' performance. Even Scholastic Aptitude Test
(SAT) scores in increasing number of States in America are ignored
in determining school performance because of their bias against
the poor and general unreliability. We force our grade six students
to take the National Diagnostic Test yet a debate is raging now
in the United Kingdom whether it is right for 14 year-old students
to hurdle national examinations instead of the 15-16 year-old European
standard ages for the mandatory examinations to allow cognitive
learning to develop further among children.
Why the DepEd is passionately invoking research studies abroad
which infer economic benefits through prioritization of math, science
and english yet remain oblivious to the studies of our scholars
which argue that students gain quick mastery of science and math
through use of the native language is something it must answer now.
We have no shortage of programs that address the low quality of
education in the country. Just two years ago, then Sec. Raul Roco
made an impassioned argument in the Senate that his Restructured
Basic Education Curriculum is the solution to the low ranking of
the Philippines in math and science examinations. We have yet to
see the conclusive results of this program and now comes another
bold proposal from DepEd to add another year in High School for
those who did not pass the diagnostic test.
Millions of students will once more become guinea pigs for DepEd's
latest experiment to justify perhaps the millions of pesos they
spent in researches and study commissions to raise the quality of
Philippine education.
DepEd's Bridge Program is not akin to the Golden Gate of San Francisco
which continues to amaze countless people up to this day. It is
more like the Bridge of Sighs of Venice which offers the beautiful
sight of the lagoon or the island of S. Giorgo for the prisoners
who passed through it one last time. DepEd promises a romanticized
future yet what it can offer is only another year of misery for
students and teachers.
