Wanted: An educational summit for Cebu!

It's true that this time around the Cebu City Public Elementary school students scored better in the National Achievement Test (NAT) with a rank of no.4; however, I agree with Cebu City Consultant on Education Joy Augustus Young that it didn't give the true picture of the student's academic proficiency. I further agree that the Cebu City Government should design its own benchmark for student's performance. But who in the City of Cebu should do this? Surely this is not the job of our politicians in the Cebu City Council?

Our problems in education have only gone from bad to worse because no one has really gone into a serious study as to what went wrong in our educational system and where we should be headed to correct the mistakes of the past generation.

Our show on Straight from the Sky this week is clear-cut proof of serious problems in our educational system. It's about the newly-signed memorandum of agreement (MOA) between the Aboitiz Construction Group, Inc, led by the Metaphil Division and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) Region VII to set up the Metaphil-TESDA Institute for Technical Training (MTiTT). This MOA was designed to address an imminent problem: Lack of skilled workers in certain industries like metal fabrication or shipbuilding and what else could be out there.

The problems in our educational system isn't a problem only with lack of teachers, lack of school facilities or even lack of funds, it is a lack of foresight as to what our country would become in the next ten to 20 years. If for instance we see that a huge portion of the population would be working in the tourism industry, then we should set up schools gear towards training our students for that job.

Whilst we've already have schools that cater to Hotel and Restaurant Management (HRM), I have met so many HRM studes that I would not even hire in our small hotel in Century Plaza. That's because they can't speak proper English. Ahh... we just touched upon one huge problem in our educational system where 20 years ago, we experienced a major setback when our beloved Tita Cory Aquino became President and we belatedly learned that she was a "Tagalista".

A Tagalista is a person who promotes Tagalog Nationalism; unfortunately many Cebuanos who are misled because they too believe that Tagalog in disguise as Filipino should be the National Language. But let me point to you that I know many Tagalogs who are not Tagalistas, among them is Mrs. Preciosa Soliven, who is the UNESCO Secretary General for the Philippines, who is a true blue Bulakeña. Perhaps it is because her husband Manong Max Soliven, our publisher in the Philippine Star also believes that we are a great nation with a diverse culture.

The problem really is no one has predicted what would be the face of the Filipino workforce in the next ten years. This is where I salute the people behind the Aboitiz Corporation because they have a keen perception as to what the future would be for instance in the Shipbuilding industry.

Actually, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to be able to peek into the future. All you need to do is read the newspapers and you will know that Hyundai has signed an agreement to establish a huge shipbuilding facility in Subic. The Aboitiz Construction Group merely reacted to this report faster than the others by quickly calling upon TESDA to already act now so that we can address the problem before it becomes a problem.

Perhaps the solution to our educational problems really starts with us parents. For a long time now, the majority of Filipino parents pay for the tuition of their children from pre-school to kindergarten to grade school and all the way to College. This is why most Filipino parents cannot even go on vacations as paying for the education of their children takes most of their incomes and practically their whole lifetime. It is time to change this!

In the United States, their educational system is geared that when you graduate in High School, you can already be accepted in the workforce. Here when you are a High School graduate you are considered not fully educated and often looked down. Yet we crank out college graduates who end up jobless because they took courses where jobs are scarce.

The whole trouble is, the Department of Education (DepED) now under Secretary Jesli Lapus is geared towards an educational system patterned to fit the whole Philippine archipelago and in the end, it doesn't serve the purposes for each Region. I propose an Educational Summit with the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation, Inc. (RAFI) as secretariat only for the Province of Cebu and its component cities, which should include not only DepED, but business leaders and Parent-Teachers Association (PTA) to promote shifts in our grade and high school in order to prepare them for the jobs that would be available in the Province of Cebu in the next ten years.