Problem and purpose of PH education

The problem in Philippine education is not the number of years children go to school. The problem is how to keep children in school. Millions of pupils who enter Grade 1 do not finish high school. K + 12 suggests that it will equip only those who will finish high school with the basic skills and values needed for productive citizenship. But it does not take into account the additional two years of agony that the children must go through in dilapidated school buildings.

Without books, you get nowhere in life. If indeed adding two more years will improve the state of Philippine education as it attempts to benchmark with the rest of the First World, why don’t education officials look into the impact that six years of elementary education and four years of high school make on hundreds of thousands of children who go to school hungry.

The inadequacy is not in the number of subjects or available textbooks, or the number of hours spent on Math or Reading. The problem is the competence of those teaching the subjects, and the lack of books or classrooms or science laboratories in many poor municipalities because we prioritize the servicing of foreign debt over the future of our children.

You can add to that the lack of inspiration and motivation for our underpaid teachers, the corruption in the Department of Education and in the hiring of teachers, and the kind of environment children now have. You actually have a recipe for people who will be able to survive on a daily basis, but you are not creating an individual who believes in himself, in his capacities, one who is free to choose the kind of life he wants. You educate a child to become a person, not to become a nurse or an engineer. You send a child to school because of his inherent value of the person, not because he will be useful someday.

—RYAN MABOLOC,

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