AS SEEN ON TV
The Business of Education
To finish college one must hurdle 6 years of elementary, 4 years of high school, 2 years of pre-university and 3 years of university. That’s 15 good years of preparation (excluding play school, kindergarten, and board review if any).
The government thinks it is the way to make graduates globally competitive.
To parents the extra year is torture. Think about all the costs (not just tuition), such as allowances and incidental expenses that will eventually make education in the Philippines the poor man’s unreachable star, if it isn’t already.
Who will stand to gain from this?
Private schools will make a killing thru charges and fees derived from padded subjects, a good 2 semesters of new revenue stream!
Kabataan Partylist Representative Raymond Palatino says 88 percent of colleges and universities are privately owned and only 12 percent run by government, a very lopsided gainer to loser ratio.
The Department of Education should instead make sure students get quality preparatory education. It is not in the number of years but the quality of learning that will make our graduates ready to face the globe.
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Before President Gloria Arroyo delivered SONA I asked Press Secretary Cerge Remonde for hints on the “well-guarded” State of the Nation draft. Remonde said the speech will focus on gains in education among other “exciting” matters.
During the SONA, we heard a cacophony of economic achievements, and missives aimed at political opponents (in between applauses. But there was little mention of education.
The president did say she was “partial to education”. Being a teacher once, she thinks we should put emphasis on education and skills training.
Ironically it looks like the Philippines is not ruled by a former teacher.
Government only spends about 2 to 3 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product on Public School Education. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) prescribed a minimum of 6 percent of a country’s GDP for education spending.
We just don’t measure up.
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Many Filipinos break the law everyday, without even knowing it. Spitting, jaywalking or littering could get one jailed and fined in countries like Singapore. But here in RP, violators are either uninformed or misinformed about the law. That’s why educators want Rule of Law taught in schools.
The Law as part of school curriculum orients kids on the justice system. The subject is designed thru the efforts of the Public Education on the Rule of Law Advancement and Support or PERLAS.
An early brush up on the law is supposed to make school children appreciate a society where order is enforced by punishing law offenders and rewarding those who keep to what’s legal.
However, DepED must make sure it has competent teachers to handle the subject. Competence entails not just knowledge but the ability to answer questions from children and simplify complex legal theories.
Teachers must also have talent to make a boring subject interesting.
If they are not engaging enough, this would again be another futile social science class where there’s too much to memorize and nothing to learn!
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No offense meant to English majors but a recent study by the Foundation for Upgrading the Standard of Education (FUSE) notes that Math majors teach English BETTER THAN English majors.
Dr. Ester Ogena of DOST claims this is backed by 2 independent studies conducted by the DepEd. Examination results showed students taught by math majors perform better in English than those taught by English majors. This underscores the need for proper teacher training, to make them effective.
To a certain extent, I agree math teachers can express themselves clearly simply because they should. Math is a difficult subject taught in English, a second language to both the teacher and student.
Math teachers therefore take extra effort in expressing themselves in English, to make sure mathematical principles are explained clearly.
That makes them express better… in both word and number!
(Comments or suggestions are welcome. Email: stanley.palisada@gmail.com)