OPINION | Real problems need real solutions By Luis V. Teodoro READ:
PHILIPPINE STAR/ WALTER BOLLOZOSost if not all Filipinos when asked will say that they value education because it assures the employability of their children. Education is for them either a way out of want and poverty, a means of continuing to live in the middle-class manner to which they have been accustomed, or, if they are among the very rich, merely something that would go well with the credentials of their sons as the future CEOs of their company.
They all know that education begins with such fundamentals as reading and writing, and adding, subtracting, dividing, and multiplying sums. But already in crisis for decades — haunted by shortfalls in classrooms and teachers as well as books and equipment — the basic education system of the Philippines fell even further behind that of other countries during the two-year-long pandemic lockdown.
The Economic Policy Institute identified in September 2020 as a “critical opportunity gap” in online learning the uneven access to computers and the internet. That “digital divide” affected not only learners but also their parents and teachers who had problems in adjusting to the different teaching methods the pandemic had forced on teachers. It also further marginalized students with special needs.
The same administration pointedly raised police and military salaries while ignoring the long-standing need for similar increases in teacher wages. It instead militarized the bureaucracy while increasing its own 2022 confidential, intelligence, and contingency funds. She provided information that has long been conventional knowledge, such as the shortage in classrooms and resources, which she described as the “most pressing issue” in education; the low literacy and numeracy levels of learners that the 2018 report of the Program for International Student Assessment found; the cluttered K-12 program’s failure to assure the employability of graduates; and the lack of training and support systems for teachers.
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