If rated, the gov’t will get an “F” in performance

The usual school-opening blues were there last Monday: not enough classrooms, not enough teachers, too many students. Almost all the public schools are bursting at the seams, with too many students crammed in classrooms—a situation that hinders learning. Others have to hold classes inside tents and even under the trees, or in schools damaged by recent typhoons. As of last count, we need 34,131 more classrooms and 61,510 more teachers. If little is done this year, the shortages will increase next year as more and more children come of school age.

The increase in the number of students cannot be helped considering the fertility of Filipino mothers and the libido of most fathers many of whom are idle and jobless, but certainly the government can do something about the lack of classrooms and teachers. All it has to do is build more schools and hire more teachers. It’s as simple as that. There are tens of thousands of education graduates who are jobless, and if the Department of Public Works and Highways did not allot billions of pesos to repair streets that do not need repair and used the money to build new classrooms and repair the damaged ones, the shortage would be eased, if not totally eliminated.

Let’s face it, we can never catch up with the burgeoning student population at the present rate we build schools. Every year we build and repair more schools, but the number of students increases even faster. We should build more schools faster and hire more teachers faster to catch up with the student population.

Filipino families pay much importance to giving their children enough education to improve their lives. The ambition of most Filipino children is to finish college. The ambition of most Filipino families is to have their children finish school. Diplomas are usually the main decoration of the living rooms of many homes in the provinces. That is how proud families are of their children who finish school. To them, a good education is the key not only to a good life but also to the esteem of relatives, friends and neighbors.

We see the pains that students go through just to go to school. They walk many kilometers twice a day to go to and from school. They cross rivers and streams, on foot and in boats; they trudge over hills and dales and sometimes endure rains and the hot sun on their way to school. They yearn to learn that much.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development gives poor families thousands of pesos each every month as an incentive to keep their children in elementary school. The government realizes that a good education will pull these families out of poverty. Yet the same government does not give them enough classrooms, teachers and textbooks to help them learn.

The usual excuse is lack of funds. The Department of Education is never given enough money to provide for the urgent needs of the student population. Yet the same government gives billions of pesos in pork barrel to legislators who steal most of it, and extra operating expenses and allowances to the leaders of the Senate and the House which they use to bribe fellow legislators.

Why not use the pork barrel funds for a school-building and teacher-hiring program? After all, the members of Congress claim they use their pork barrel to help the people. What better way to help them than to provide their children with enough schools, teachers, and textbooks. Why not tell all the government-owned and -controlled corporations (GOCCs) to give 10 percent of their incomes to the school-building program? Many GOCCs use part of their incomes to give scandalous bonuses and allowances to their officials and employees.

Why not use the savings of all government agencies to help fund education? Most high public officials steal these savings or use them for seminars and similar activities that are of no really useful purpose just so the money will not revert back to the Treasury at the end of the fiscal year.

Speaking of textbooks, when I was in elementary school, all our textbooks were hardbound copies that were used every year. The schools rent them out to students. Families that have bought copies pass them on to younger children, cousins and other relatives or neighbors. Before every school year in those days, students and their parents go from house to house to ask if they can borrow some textbooks. Most textbooks in those days carry on the inside front cover a long list of the names of the students that used them. It saved the families then a lot of money. Why can’t we do the same thing today?

Today, the textbook business is made to order for the profit of book publishers and printers and textbooks writers. The books are paperbacks and good for only one year. The workbooks are written on by the students and can’t be used again. Which means the printer will have to print more books next year. More money for them and the bookstores.

There is now a mad scramble for teachers who think so highly of themselves as to write more textbooks that some of these are riddled with errors. These errors are passed on to the students, which is why we have so many poor-quality graduates. The DepEd is supposed to review and check these books before publication, but it is either these reviewers have little time for their jobs or too ignorant to know any better that most of the errors go undetected. That is another reason for the poor quality of our graduates.

If the students are asked to rate their government on its performance in education, the government will get a grade of “F,” for “Failed.”