Curriculum making crisis: Avoid repeating mistakes of the past

The Department of Education (DepEd) has announced that the new curriculum for Kinder to grade 10 (K-10) is targeted to be rolled out in school year 2024-2025, not this school year. Undersecretary and spokesperson Michael Poa cited the need to collate public feedback on the draft of the new K-10, posted last April on the department’s social media pages, for concerned stakeholders to analyze as well as give comments and suggestions for improvement. That was a very commendable decision of Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte and we thank her for her collegial leadership. However, to think that this task of collating feedback will require curriculum experts one year to do is a big question to many, and another question that comes to mind is, will they craft another “new” curriculum out of those numerous feedback? We earnestly hope not. We have had enough trial and error and experimentation on the curriculum.

This slow action is very reminiscent of the department’s old habit of postponing refinement and restructuring of the curriculum for the obvious reason that they had not religiously followed the curriculum implementation process (since 2013), hence, no basis for such curriculum change. The K-12 curricula has not been corrected and restructured for more than a decade, which is so unlike the usual practice in the past. Corollary to this was the lack of appropriate training for teachers on the curriculum and the changes made. This neglect proved to be the biggest mistake that caused the string of failures and frustrations for the teachers and very poor performance of the learners.

We can also recall the hasty implementation of the “most essential learning competencies” (MELCs), which was clearly conceived to address the problem of a congested curriculum, but unfortunately, has added confusion to many teachers in some subject areas, particularly in the English and math curricula. Only a few learning competencies, some of which are not even essential, were selected while disregarding the core academic content and foundational skills. On the other hand, a few curricula for other subject areas like Araling Panlipunan and science may be considered acceptable, needing minor refinement. This MELCs led again to more than a year of crafting the “new” K-10 curriculum that was presented to the public last April which, unfortunately, was seen as even more defective than the old one. Another question we want to ask is, are the same people being tasked to repair the curriculum?

It was mentioned by the Vice President in her Basic Education Report that the “most pressing issue” hounding the Philippine education and the biggest concern of DepEd is the lack of infrastructure and resources to support ideal teaching. While the lack of technological resources that can provide our learners the 21st-century education they ought to get is a monumental problem, the biggest source of our educational crisis today was a faulty curriculum, a curriculum making crisis that has not been resolved and tends to repeat itself. It is only now, after more than a decade, that DepEd finally accepted the curriculum defects and the inconsistencies in the content standards and learning competencies, and this was articulated in their shaping papers that accompany the draft of the new K-10.

Apart from the comments and suggestions we have submitted to DepEd on the proposed “new” K-10 curriculum, one of the practical proposals we included was to just fix the “old” K-12 curriculum. We clarified that the old K-12 was not entirely defective. There are curricula in some subject areas and/or grade level that are acceptable and can be fixed easily. The defective ones can be remedied by capitalizing the talents of seasoned teachers in various subject areas who know exactly how to do the task. As K-12 is more than a decade old and may be needing significant changes, this is the time not only to exclude irrelevant contents and competencies but also to include the 21st-century competencies, particularly in information technology and multimedia literacies. Doing this and coming up with a well-crafted curriculum will save huge budget for “another relevant” curriculum some officials may propose to do again.

We hope that whoever are working on the curriculum will avoid the defects and inconsistencies already mentioned in the DepEd shaping papers and resolve the curriculum making crisis. In addition, while waiting for the new curriculum to be finalized, training may be focused on honing the capabilities of instructional leaders and teachers, in relation to curriculum implementation, complemented by effective contextualization, an important teacher skill that can withstand a defective or flawed curriculum. However, having no appropriate training on curriculum and its related components for more than a decade, our teachers may take longer time to comprehend the important roles they need to play in its implementation. It will also take a greater political will of our responsible DepEd officials and leaders to change the culture of complacency and mediocrity in the department, from the higher offices down to our schools.

FLORENCIA C. DOMINGO, Ph.D.,
[email protected]