EDUCATION AND TEACHING FORUM

Discussants perplexed by deafening silence of education officials

Now on its fourth week, our special forum on “The State of Education and Teaching in the Philippines” continues to generate a healthy exchange of views between Forum members. However, some members are perplexed by the absence of any feedback from education officials in the government sector. “What is interesting is that I have yet to see anyone from DepEd post a reply,” says Forum member tonybau in a recent post. “Don’t you think we are losing out on feedback from the horse’s mouth, so to speak?”

I responded to his comment by saying that maybe they simply haven’t heard yet about this Forum, or that something’s holding them back (perhaps the chaos in the schoolrooms that are being used today as relocation centers for victims of Typhoon Ondoy?). Anyway, I expressed the hope of hearing from a responsible DepEd official sometime soon, for that would mean that our discussions on education and teaching here have not been falling on deaf ears.

Forum member renzphotography suggests deliberately inviting educators to join the Forum. “I’m sure there are many spicy bits in this forum that would interest an educator or two,” he says. Perhaps when things have normalized after Typhoon Pepeng has blown over—I hope with very minimal additional damage to our country that’s already reeling from Typhoon Ondoy’s killer floods—we may have to do precisely that.

In the meantime, let’s keep our discussions on a high note!

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Below are the postings currently being discussed in the Forum. You are most welcome to respond to any of the postings made so far or to post an entirely new topic of your own. Do share with us your thoughts on how honest-to-goodness education and teaching reforms might be achieved in our country.

(Click username to read posting)

—Tonybau, a medical doctor and former PTA president, paints a bleak scenario of overcrowding, teacher overload and lack of qualified teachers, lack of basic facilities like clean water and libraries, and malnutrition among pupils in his city’s public high school. He then advocates a total overhaul of the educational system that “continues to churn out students, majority of [whom] are products of an environment where teachers are there only to earn their keep.”

—Florlaca, a retired university professor and department head with a master’s in zoology and a doctorate in comparative endocrinology, vigorously proposes that improving research performance is essential to real academic reform. He says that publications that meet internationally accepted criteria are the best indicator of research performance and of competence to do other academic work as well. We still have to hear a response to this from academe or from education officials.

—Arvin Ortiz, a student-writer, points out that while some professors consider Wikipedia as an unreliable source for students’ research papers and theses, some PhDs in the Philippines have actually cited Wikipedia as a source for the textbooks they have written. What gives?

—Penmanila, creative writing institute director and English professor at the University of the Philippines, notes that teachers of English in the Philippines have such a weak command of the English language themselves, and wonders how their English can be improved. He asks: Do seminars and things of that sort really help?

—Madgirl109, who describes herself as “just another struggling Filipino worker in Japan,” gives a first-hand view of the problems and opportunities of Filipinos working in Japan. For them to improve their job and income prospects in Japan, she says, they need to become more proficient not only in English but in Nihongo as well.

—Meikah, who used to be a university instructor but now works as a web education professional, believes that education and teaching in the country have gotten from bad to worse. She says college students lack comprehension skills because their teachers in grade school and high school had made no effort at all to help them understand or teach them how to understand their lessons.

—Maudionisio says that to foist the myth of “one nation, one language,” the Philippine government massively brainwashed elementary pupils in the 1960s to think that the national language was Pilipino, and that the other languages spoken by Filipinos in the other regions were simply dialects. He contends that this brainwashing has not been undone, so some of those pupils—now grown up—still erroneously refer to the various Philippine languages as “dialects.”

Click to read the complete individual postings and to post your response