Quality of RP education - CHASING THE WIND by Felipe B. Miranda

All over the country, summer means a long train of graduation ceremonies, each ritualistically certifying to young people having finished another level of formal education. Their bright faces reflect much happiness, at times quite a bit of pride and – almost always – too much innocence.

For unless they had been exceptionally fortunate, chances are their years in school did not allow them to understand the objective history of their society, the true character of their institutions, or the dynamics of an international environment where their comparative stature as a nation had not improved much in the last three decades.

Few graduates can explain the persistent exploitation of most Filipinos in a country with formal claims to being democratic and Christian. Fewer still can trace the systematic subversion of processes formally ensuring that the will of the people would be monitored, heeded and would prevail in their political governance. Only an insignificant number rightly suspects why despite our oft-acknowledged friendliness to foreigners and a long string of proffered incentives for their business ventures, foreign investors remain unimpressed and appear to prefer other countries.

Hardly any of our graduates understand why Filipinos on contract work abroad often wind up in positions that mock the college degrees they sport, doing something their foreign hosts disdain to do themselves or – given their heightened opportunity costs – find ridiculous to undertake.

Except for the shallow explanation Eh kasi, Pinoy, most of our graduates will be unable to give a coherent account of why – and how – in this country, national crimes dating back a hundred years and plunder cases about three decades earlier remain unresolved, with their perpetrators even being promoted as heroic personalities deserving of national acclaim!

And should they somehow be distracted by the current ritual of national elections, exceedingly few of our graduates will be able to explain why truly capable candidates trail so far behind Mr. Noli de Castro, the formidable media creation who appears to be our Bayan’s quintessential Kabayan. Too few of the recently graduated really comprehend the tragedy of a Tañada currently lagging so far behind his political inferiors. Had personal character, legislative performance, nationalism and overall patriotism been adequately explored in the course of educating our graduates, more of them now would understand why a Senate without Tañada impoverishes an already politically destitute nation.

The quality of Philippine education has deteriorated much in the last three decades, bonsai-ing practically two generations of Filipinos since the Presidential Commission to Survey Philippine Education of 1971 identified the educational system’s numerous ills. Actually, the maladies noted by this study have simply worsened and, in the particular case of the system’s susceptibility to massive graft and corruption and a few other vulnerabilities, one must speak of remarkable deterioration.

Despite the comprehensiveness of this early study – and the other studies which followed in the next decades – one notes a critical omission in its recommendations on how to improve this country’s quality of education. No explicit acknowledgment was made as regards education’s need to be grounded on truth and truthfulness. Perhaps the political milieu in 1971, already building up the scaffolding for formal authoritarian rule, was not partial to the kind of truthfulness and transparency that democratic education presumes.

This lack of truth-telling may well be the greatest handicap of our educational system. Romanticizing the past, cosmeticizing the present and glorifying the future had been standard props in the education of our youth over the last three decades. Reality checks and truth-telling – badly neglected across the years – are badly needed in our times. Those who now run the Department of Education, Culture and Sports – Secretary Roco, more than any other official – may well have run these reality checks already. If so, they must have much of a truth to tell about the current state of Philippine education.

And, truth to tell, what must be done. Now, not tomorrow, and certainly not the day after.