In celebration of Mario Taguiwalo and Victor Ordoñez

Structural reform is finally taking shape in Philippine education. Formal education leaders have led this charge but there are two in particular who, as philosophers, articulated the foundations for these changes: Mario Taguiwalo and Victor Ordoñez, whose breadth and scope of thought helped shape the reforms we see today.

On May 4, friends paid tribute to Mario in a program in Malacañang. May 4 also marked the third anniversary of Victor’s passing.

Both men were exceptional human beings with an ability to take complex ideas and contentious discussions and summarize these into simple but clear frameworks upon which new ideas could be built so that even warring parties each felt they had “won over” the other.

They shared a passion for education and the social sectors. Both served in government, their paths crossing in the administration of President Cory Aquino when Mario was health undersecretary and Victor, education undersecretary. And interestingly enough, they shared an extracurricular career in film as “character actors” or “bit players,” depending on your point of view.

Mario once wrote, “Victor and I were actually in one scene together in a movie entitled ‘Kid, Huwag Kang Susuko,’ starring Richard Gomez.  At that time, Victor and I were already undersecretaries (in government), and we had a scene together that Director Peque Gallaga said could be used to promote the movie as endorsed by the Departments of Education and Health. The problem was, the movie was about illegal gambling in human blood sports. Victor played a shady Chinese businessman with a weak chin; I was a corrupt small-time politician with a pot belly.”

Both had a great sense of humor.

But it is in education reform where they made their greatest contribution, in my view.

In “Politics and Education Reform,” Mario wrote in 2009:

“The urgency of education reform is no longer debated. Only the sequence and dynamics of the process are in dispute.

“As for the basic directions of education reform, evidence and expert consensus point to certain agreed fundamentals.

“1. We need a much greater effort to get all children ready for school by age 6 using a wide variety of early childhood care and development interventions at homes, communities and institutions.

“2. We must establish a longer basic education cycle than the 10 years we have at present.

“3. We must have effective mother tongue language education to achieve early mastery of literacy skills before children transition to national and English language education.

“4. Our education delivery, administration, governance and accountability have to be decentralized to school and community levels.

“5. Communities, in turn, must have institutionalized participation in education governance and accountability.

“6. The preparation, hiring and supervision of teachers must emphasize teaching competencies associated with child learning rather than the accumulation of credentials.

“7. Our education facilities and education administration must be modernized using cost-effective and appropriate technologies.

“8. We must attain consistent compliance with basic standards in our education provisions to all communities.

“9. A large, extensive and dynamic set of private education options at all levels must be sustained as an essential complement to our public education system.

“10. Higher education programs and institutions must be financed based on proven performance on valued aspects of higher education competencies.”

Mario stressed that these reforms were unlikely to succeed if pursued solely by the education sector without broader multisectoral participation. For the package to be possible, strong political backing by the national leadership at the highest levels was “non-negotiable.” In short, we needed an “education president.”

Victor’s reform view was similarly structural:

“Economics and technology have changed the way people live and work in advanced communities throughout the world, while other communities still live in cultural patterns unchanged over centuries, more deeply isolated and quagmired in poverty than ever before. And yet, for both the advantaged and the poor, the present structures for education, where it is available, remain basically the same: prescribed primary schooling of about six years, organized by age cohorts, and followed by secondary education focused on largely rigid academic subject classifications, with higher education available to a select minority.”

Here, systemic change in the approach to education was necessary: “The search is not for a single new paradigm, but for as many new paradigms as are demanded by the diverse learning needs of vastly different communities and societies at different stages of development in different sociocultural settings. The search for new paradigms does not imply rejection of the basic ethos of learning and schooling… It does recognize that much of the present structure of education and much that now occupies the time of the learner must be rethought in light of the demands of the 21st century.”

The work on education reform will not be finished in the short-to-medium term. But strong philosophical underpinnings have been laid and both Mario and Victor were instrumental in this regard.

Mario and Victor raised our hopes for a better Philippines. Our world is that much richer for having had them with us.

Juan Miguel Luz (juanmiguel.luz@gmail.com) is dean of the Center for Development Management at the Asian Institute of Management.