EDITORIAL - A mess in education

What is "artificial dissemination"? And what is "a clowning of cows"? Those phrases came up not in text messages, where language is freely mangled, but in an exam. No, not for primary or secondary school, but in the latest licensure examination for teachers, given Aug. 26 by the Philippine Regulatory Commission. To their credit, some of the prospective teachers themselves spotted the grammatical errors and complained about them, fearing the wrong questions could make them flunk the exam.

Now the government is mulling a repeat of the examination, according to Education Secretary Raul Roco. Of course the prospective teachers will have to take a new exam; how can you grade test performance based on erroneous questions? This means time, effort and money wasted on the part of both the teachers and those who administered the tests.

This also raises concern anew about the state of Philippine education. In recent years there have been scandals about the distribution of substandard textbooks in public schools – books that are riddled not only with grammatical errors but even factual inaccuracies. Unofficial test reviewers, which some schools use, are also riddled with errors. Some sectors have raised concern that the errors may not even be spotted since public schools suffer from an acute lack of qualified teachers.

When the furor over substandard textbooks erupted, the education department explained that it lacked personnel to inspect all textbooks and ensure quality in the books supplied to public schools. This time, who’s to blame for the erroneous questions in the licensure examination for teachers? As long as prospective teachers notice the mistakes, the problem is not too worrisome. But what if prospective teachers are so badly trained they can’t even spot an erroneous question?

Such problems fuel fears that ge-nerations of Filipinos are growing up uneducated and miseducated. A recent survey has already ranked education in this country way behind those of its Asian neighbors. Various quarters have warned often enough that substandard education could spell disaster for the nation in a knowledge-based global economy. The government must address this mess immediately.