By PATRICK MATTHEW B. POOTEN

“Education is a potent weapon of a people struggling for economic emancipation, political independence, and cultural renaissance.” We are such a people. Philippine Education therefore should address the deep rooted social problems suffered for so long by the greater majority of the Filipino people.

The above-universally accepted adage on the purpose of education does not seem to be what PNoy’s K+12 education program addresses. Apparently, it is the contrary.

According to the position of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) on PNoy’s K to 12, it is devoid of a comprehensive analysis, study, as well as research on the real and concrete fundamental problems of our nation’s present educational system. To ACT, since there is no encompassing and quality solutions presented by the K+12 to the problems faced by our educational system, it offers no benefit nor advantage to the nation’s sorry state of education, be it on short or long term basis for the teachers, the learners, and the whole Filipino masses, except that it caters to the whims and dictates of foreign capitalists, transnational big businesses, banks and even governments.

Limiting the discussion on the Cordillera situation, the problems that our people are facing are no different to that at the national level.

For instance, there was the mandated synchronized orientation on PNoy’s K+12 last June 16 conducted in all public schools, both elementary and secondary in CAR. Most schools took it as an opportunity to set the general PTA assemblies on that date, and eventually discussions were centered on local PTA issues putting the K+12 orientation aside.

Admittedly enough, what is there to orient teachers, parents and even learners about if there is no legal basis except for the Kindergarten Law, no finances, no curriculum, no textbooks, no modules or instructional materials, and no extensive training for school heads in order to have at least an intelligent and interesting discussion or sharing with the various stakeholders. The only available material was the general K+12 power point presentation prepared by DepEd Secretary Armin Luistro but majority of our schools do not have functional computers, much more LCD projectors.

A particular example is the case of our kindergarten. The PNoy K+12 “universal kindergarten” implemented last school year, seems disastrous for most of our kids. A year after the implementation of the universal kindergarten program, same problems and difficulties remain unsolved. These problems include the lack of a realistic curriculum based on our particular needs, interests, and aspirations as a people; lack of trained and properly prepared kindergarten teachers, lack of classroom, chairs and even water and sanitation facilities.

For how can our division provide such wanting needs if there are no funds intended to address them. So what quality kindergarten learning was afforded to our kids last year except that they have grown a year older, and the teachers relieved of a year of physical and mental anguish.

It should be noted that a kindergarten teacher receives PhP1500 a month for a half day work, and then another PhP1500 if the teacher hikes to another elementary school for the other half of the day. In the Cordillera, the so-called “nearby schools” are kilometers away from each other. So what quality learning can be expected in such a situation yet kindergarten education is the very foundation of formal schooling.

This year, the failure of the K+12 of PNoy is expected to be of greater heights and proportion. For aside from the unprepared and inferior kindergarten, is the implementation of Grade 7. Added to the confusions brought about by PNoy’s K+12 among teachers, students and parents are many unclear and unanswered questions. Understandably enough, after the mass training of Grade 7 teachers last month in Baguio City, many of them find it better and more implementable the conventional teaching of the different subject areas in First Year, since students enrolled in Grade 7 are products of the old curriculum.

Although Grade 7 teachers, during the training were asked to provide flash drives in order for them to save the prepared but incomplete modules, the lack of computer facilities in their home schools gives them the difficulty of reproduction. Another is that the reproduction of the modules for the students to use adds to the financial burden of schools with very minimal MOOE allocations.

Module 1 of Grade 7 Science expects the teacher to say to the class: “In Grade 6, you have learned about mixtures and their characteristics…if the parts of a mixture can be identified, it is heterogeneous.” What is funny is that the 7th graders in a certain school are not graduates of the same elementary school nor had the same science teacher the year before. Why the assumption?

How can there be a really honest implementation of PNoy’s K+12 if there is no law to be implemented, so they say? What is to be implemented if there is no full K+12 curriculum?

These are some of the basic questions being asked considering the absence of textbooks, incomplete modules and no lesson plans. Teachers are left on the quandary on what methods or strategies should they use in teacher 7th graders. In the first place, why is there a rush in enforcing a curriculum under experimentation. This would just redound to adding more problems on the current state of our educational system.

Then comes again the issue on the use of the “mother tongue” or multi-language teaching. In the case of the people of Mountain Province where there are various ethno-linguistic groups, is the community dialect considered a mother tongue? Is the Northern Kankanaey the mother tongue of the Applai tribes? Is it not that DepEd and Malacanang identified eight mother tongues? Since Ilocano is one of them, does it mean that Ilocano becomes the mother tongue in the Cordillera Administrative Region? Questions may go on and on while there are really no holistic and intelligent explanations by the curriculum makers of PNoy’s K+12.

During the administration of Congressman Max Dalog as governor of Mountain Province, he supported a group of professionals who advocated the writing of local history in support of the government’s thrust of indigenous peoples’ education or IPED.

It was a welcome move so that some public schools started integrating local history and culture in their classes. But here comes the contradiction in PNoy’s K+12 because the time spent for Araling Panlipunan is greatly reduced. Yet it is in this subject area where the values of patriotism, nationalism, cultural preservation, and feeling of identity are absorbed by the learners. It is in this subject where geography, history and civics are learned and are first rooted in the minds and hearts of the future citizens of the land. And it is in this subject that cultural roots, folklore, mores, and tradition are appreciated.

Even the scholars of ancient China left their classrooms and instead of confining themselves on the monastic study of philosophy, they integrated themselves with the people for according to them, it is the learning of history that collective progress is attained.

In a Teachers’ Congress held at Sagada, Mountain Province, a consultant on PNoy’s K+12 explained that Grades 11 and 12 or “senior high school” would be a choice between skills development or academic tertiary education by the concerned students. This brings the question if PNoy’s K+12 purpose is to produce semi-skilled or skilled workers to join the ballooning number of OFWs. If the last two years of high school education would provide the learners technical/vocational training, shall we not be adding problems to the fast growing number of underemployed and unemployed?

Are we made to understand that tertiary education is now for the rich and well-to-do? Could this be the reason why the government is reducing the budget of state colleges and universities where the greater majority who comes from the lower classes can afford to get college education?

It seems obvious that PNOy’s K+12 is anti-people. It is anti-people since in the very beginning, they claim that the so-called “half-baked” college graduates of Philippine colleges and universities is due a very short span of basic education. If in the past, with only ten years of basic education, Filipino college graduates fare equal or even higher in terms of knowledge and skills with their Asian counterparts, the solution then does not lie in adding additional years which would mean additional expense and time for the ordinary Filipino.

The dream of every homeless and hungry Juan dela Cruz is to send his child to school and finish the shortest possible time so the child may find gainful employment and eventually lift the family from dire poverty. It is hard to believe that PNoy’s K+12 is a “minus 2 instead of plus 2” as contained in the DepEd primer that even goes further to claim that “the plan is not plus 2 years before graduation but minus 2 years before work.”

What is hard to understand is where the government based its decision to enforce a drastic change in an existing curriculum due to impositions of foreign bodies like the Washington Accord of America which prescribes 12 years basic education as an entry to recognition of engineering professionals; the Bologna Process of Europe which also required 12 years of education for university admission and practice; the APEC and the ASEAN, and even SEAMEO-Innotech of Asia? We are Filipinos and we have our own peculiarities different from our foreign counterparts.

It is also significant to cite that kindergarten education, again the very foundation of formal schooling is not based on the ‘Filipino context’. This is said because the primary references being introduced in PNoy’s K+12 kindergarten curriculum are: Developmentally Appropriate Practices in Early Childhood Program: Serving Children from Birth through Age Eight, edited by Carol Copple and Sue Bredecamp of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) of the United States of America, and Developmentally Appropriate Curriculum: Best Practices in Early Childhood Education, published in 2011 also in the USA by Pearson Education, Inc.

These are just some of the issues that remain unanswered whereby if there are not concrete answers, one would come to the conclusion that PNoy’s K+12 program is inferior and anti-people.

It might turn out that in the final analysis, it may not be adding years to basic education that would present concrete solutions to the production of “half-baked” graduates; but the improvement of educational facilities, libraries, science laboratories, state subsidy for further trainings and graduate studies of teachers and other personnel that compose the academic machine; and the importance of a mass-oriented, scientific and nationalist educational curriculum. # nordis.net