By Danilo P. Padua, PhD
Last July 2, two days after the 20th Congress opened, 23 senators submitted their 10 priority bills each in the Senate. Only Senator M. Zubiri, a former Senate President, was empty handed. This was duly reported by the Philippine Star the following day.
Seems only 3 of them (Senators F. Escudero, R. Marcoleta, and C. Villar) are already ready to rumble as they submitted their lists with complete titles.
Most of the bills being eyed seem to just suddenly popped up from their quiet reverie, and bereft of critical thinking. They were just borne out from just 1 or 2 angles of the issue making them qualify to be just a figment of their imagination. No tangible and practical applications. At best, they can only serve as a staple for upper house deliberations but not expected to have laws enacted from them. That is like unknowingly dumping taxpayers’ money in the garbage bin.
Let us take just 2 of the intended bills, both for the education sector. One is from Sen. S. Gatchalian (Shortening the current 4-year College Course to 3 years); and the other, from Sen. Jinggoy Estrada (Removal of the added 2 years of H.S. – going back to 10 yrs of basic education)
Gatchalian’s proposal is to put all general courses from the college level to H.S. That is his idea to shorten the college courses. That means, 12 years for basic education and 3 years for college. The Sen explains that this will reduce at least one year for students to finish their bachelor’s education. Also, the college should be devoted to the study of the chosen field of specialization by the student.
Firstly, there are already trained faculty members for the general courses in college. And they are under CHED. If they are to be moved to the H.S. level, there will be a lot to surmount or maybe to dismantle such as the staffing pattern under DepEd, and the attendant disruption of the faculty set up in College. The budgeting will necessarily be adjusted. There will be a lot of replanning, restructuring, and the like. In short, it will be more messy to do it than to just improve the implementation of R.A. 2013 (Enhanced Basic Education Act).
The Senior High School was launched in 2016, barely 9 years in existence which is not a sufficient period to gauge the effectivity or ineffectivity of the program.
When the basic education was increased from 10 to 12 years, many in the education sector hailed it as aligning local education to international standards. Rightly so. We were already at par with the rest of the world, except one country in Africa.
A lot of studies, analyses, etc were spent into it. RA 2013 was a result of due diligence from various sectors. To reverse it now is like driving a car in reverse, not forward.
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) unfortunately showed that our students are almost at the rock bottom of the list in Math Science, and critical thinking. Fortunately, our CAR students are much better than those from the rest of the country. This is more on the implementation rather than the set programme itself.
If there are flaws in the implementation of the Programme, it’s better to enhance or improve it. In short, fix the flaws so our students will become more critical thinkers.
That of Sen Jinggoy is even worse, because we will almost totally revert back to the unwanted state of our education before. At least with the addition of 2 years in our basic education, we somehow gained a measure of credibility in the world arena. The idea of not going forward with it should never be entertained.
The plans of the 2 senators are very short sighted, and lacking of due diligence, they should be shelved pronto albeit with an alternative proposal of making the present programme become workable.
Education should not be treated like a guinea pig.
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