LAST JUNE 21, Antonio Calipjo Go posted an article titled ?The Blind Leading The Blind,? a searing critique of ?Biology,? the ?unimaginatively titled? textbook developed by the UP National Institute for Science and Mathematics Education Development or UP NISMED. Go says many entries in this textbook are outdated, factually erroneous, the product of ?wanton carelessness? and sometimes even ?downright silly? and ?stupid.?

He adds that UP-Nismed?s ?Biology? should be ?the crucible to test the new administration?s resolve to avert the total collapse of basic education in the Philippines.?

?Our textbooks must be purged of all stale data, misinformation, idiocies and inanities, fallacies and errors. This we must do if we are to save our children from the darkness of our own making. A law must be passed which will make the writing and publication of defective textbooks a crime with a corresponding punishment. The proper education of our young is the great moral battle that must be waged by all Filipinos who love their country.?

Considering that UP NISMED is ?an extension arm of the University of the Philippines whose goal is to raise the level of science and mathematics education in the Philippines at the basic and teacher education levels,? could their academic experts really have done such a poor job as Go claims they did?

Dr. Merle Tan, UP NISMED director, does not think so. In its official statement, UP NISMED says, ?It is important to label these as ?alleged errors? because some of the latter are not errors at all but merely products of differences in stylistic or usage preferences. Significantly, Mr. Go does not even cite his references. Nor does he mention authoritative sources as basis for what is ?correct? (as the antithesis of the ?errors? he claims to have detected) in his piecemeal nitpicking. More importantly, some of his corrections to the ?errors? do not hold water.

?Mr. Go thinks 358 pages are not enough to tackle a ?very complex? subject. He prefers the much longer book by Prentice-Hall which, he says, has 923 pages. The question is: Can Mr. Go teach the contents of the 923 pages in a single academic year? Now, this is a question of policy, on which the DepEd?not Mr. Go?is the deciding authority, and policy decisions are not amenable to a neat matrix divided into ?right? and ?wrong.? Mr. Go knows that DepEd, as a matter of policy, has recommended at that time a limited number of pages per textbook, and DepEd has good reason for doing so, given the average capability of second year high school Filipino students to digest information contained in textbooks. Despite this limitation, this 358-page textbook has managed to include all the learning competencies for second year Biology students. Yet, Mr. Go pretends to be wiser than DepEd or to be more popish than the Pope.?

Finally, UP NISMED believes that ?It is always wise to do one?s own research rather than depend on those who, for undisclosed motives, masquerade as experts and peddle misinformation in the guise of some noble-sounding advocacies. Science is littered with corpses of debunked theories and discredited nostrums peddled by charlatans who possess an iota of half-truth but who peddle it as incontestable truth.

?Mr. Go may have acquired just enough learning to find fault and split hairs in the works of others. But so far he has not shown enough learning to enable him to create a work of his own. It is a pity that he spends his time trying to demolish rather than create. Truly, a little learning is a dangerous thing.?

Of course, there is some value to Go?s highly sensationalized crusade against ?sick books.? Former Education Undersecretary Mike Luz once described Go as a ?gadfly? presumably because the word refers to ?an annoying person, especially one who provokes others into action by criticism.? In fact, the DepEd?s Instructional Materials Council Secretariat has invited Go as a resource person next week for a three-day seminar for textbook authors on content errors and how to avoid them, which is a positive step.

However, from the perspective of education reform advocates?like Dr. Tan, Dr. Ricky Nolasco of the UP Linguistics Department and the entire UP NISMED itself?the problem is systemic.

Nolasco recalls that in a textbook review for Filipino language usage that he did for the DepEd, he found repetitive errors across editions. ?Mr. Go?s claims are just the tip of the iceberg. The more important question is how do you correct the situation expeditiously? You can?t simply pull out textbooks from the system if you don?t have a suitable replacement available. Given the huge numbers of textbooks needed by a very large student population, that would take some time,? says Nolasco. He however adds that the Mother Language Education approach could work in this case, because it mobilizes the local academic community to develop and produce its own contextually relevant textbooks. ?This way, you could produce the textbooks much faster and with considerably fewer errors. More importantly, you will be giving students textbooks that they can actually read and understand,? Nolasco says.

Butch Hernandez (butchhernandez@gmail.com) is the executive director of the Foundation for Worldwide People Power.