‘Sick books’ crusader refutes DepEd’s reply

Allow me to react to what Assistant Secretary Jesus Mateo and Undersecretary for Programs and Projects Dina Ocampo of the Department of Education said as reported in “Teachers told ‘sick book’ was just a draft—DepEd” (Front Page, 6/10/15).

After reading the article, I immediately opened the DepEd website Learning Resource and Management Development System at 11 a.m. on June 10, 2015. The “Grade 10 English Learner’s Material” that I saw therein had only three units, compared to my copy of “Diversity: Celebrating Multiculturism (sic) Through World Literature,” which has four units totaling 508 pages. If the website is showing only three units (397 pages), how can the DepEd say that “3 or 4 revisions had been undertaken after the training programs” and that “most of the errors had been found and corrected before it was sent to the printer”?

Mateo said that “most of the errors Go listed had already been corrected while some were nonexistent.” He cited this particular passage: “Instant coffee is preferred to coffee that must be boiled yet.” How could he and the entire DepEd bureaucracy miss that particularly hilarious passage on page 375 of Module 3?

In its frantic effort to demonize me and portray me as a fabricator of lies, ascribing evil intentions to what I have consistently been doing for 20 years, the DepEd inadvertently finds itself the laughingstock of the people who know when they are being made fools of, who remain quiet and polite even as they hide their laughter with their knuckles. The word

“lakslustre” was “corrected” to “lacksluster”! The grave errors pertaining to the antecedent of pronouns and Sisyphus are still there!

If the entire DepEd failed to see these publicized and identified errors, how can it expect and obligate its neophyte teachers, who are under training, to spot the errors? Why rely on teachers in training to look for errors when the book’s 10 authors, 10 reviewers, two consultants and one language editor failed to see the 1,300 errors?

Will the DepEd voluntarily initiate the move to correct the errors when, previous to my exposé, there was no complainant?

Is it possible that “3 or 4 revisions were undertaken after the training programs” when training started only when the textbook was distributed to the teachers last May 15 and abruptly ended on June 1, the first day of classes?

Why is the DepEd using “first draft” textbooks containing as much as 1,300 errors to “train” its teachers? Shouldn’t they be trained using only the very best instructional materials available?

The question that the DepEd skirts and doesn’t answer is this: What are the Grade 9 students of public secondary schools using in their English classes at present?

Getting the DepEd to publicly acknowledge the errors and to announce that it is asking for my help in correcting them are not conditions but merely statement of facts. What is wrong with that? The DepEd wants me to correct the errors without anybody knowing about it and without having to publicly admit the errors. Are those not the more onerous terms and conditions? I simply want everything to be open and transparent, believing that it is the only way the DepEd will be forced to implement the corrections to the errors.

—ANTONIO CALIPJO GO, academic supervisor, Marian School of Quezon City, 199 Sauyo Road, Novaliches, Quezon City, sickbooks_togo@yahoo.com