Education Week

In this country, we need to observe an Education Week, if only to remind everyone of how much the quality of Philippine education has deterio-rated. Once not too long ago, students from neighboring countries went to the Philippines to get a good education. These days our students lag behind their Asian counterparts in achievement tests, particularly in the two subjects that matter most in this highly competitive global society – science and mathematics.

Driven by economic needs, our people who train to become teachers end up as domestic helpers abroad. Many of those who remain are underqualified and can’t even tell a bad textbook from a good one. Manufacturers of textbooks are more concerned about marketing and profits rather than the content and quality of the books. Education officials, meanwhile, are more concerned about lining their pockets than enforcing standards for textbooks. Everybody’s happy – except the students in public schools who must contend with bad grammar and even erroneous information in their books.

As mandated by the Constitution, the biggest chunk of the annual national budget should go to education. In truth, however, the biggest chunk goes to debt servicing, and what’s left for education is never enough to build the classrooms, buy the supplies and hire all the qualified teachers needed in the public school system. Even studying in a private school is no guarantee of quality education. Many private educational institutions are diploma mills whose graduates consistently flunk professional examinations.

Will the situation ever improve? It takes time for progress to be manifested in this sector, which is one reason few politicians are interested in taking up the cause of quality education. How many of our national leaders worry that our people are being left behind in the information revolution, that millions of Filipinos don’t know how to use a computer? A generation is growing up miseducated and undereducated. If this trend continues, we’ll soon end up eating our neighbors’ dust.