Flawed nursing curriculum

Why is Panitikang Filipino required in the new Nursing (BSN) curriculum (CMO No. 5, series of 2008)?

CHED’s Technical Panel for Humanities, Social Sciences and Communication abolished that course a decade ago. Why did nurses, who we can presume do not know as much about literature as literature teachers, suddenly resurrect a course that even literary scholars themselves no longer consider legitimate?

CHED must amend CMO No. 5, series of 2008, immediately. The course is being offered in the Second Semester in numerous nursing schools in the country, ensuring that our future nurses will be miseducated as far as literature is concerned.

The correct description of Filipino 2 should have been what it is envisioned to be in the General Education Curriculum (GEC), namely, Filipino for Nursing Students (Filipino for Specific Purposes). That makes a lot more sense than wasting one entire semester making first-year nursing students read Tagalog literature (which, literary scholars now know, forms only a small part of Philippine literature). Our nursing students, when they graduate, will spend a lot more time explaining health issues in Filipino to their patients than reciting Florante at Laura.

Far be it from me to downplay the importance of literature in the general education of anyone, least of all health sciences students that need to understand what makes human beings heal themselves. But literature is taught elsewhere in college anyway.

Philippine literature itself (not just Tagalog literature) is taught in Literature One, which is on The Literatures of the Philippines, which may be taught in Filipino, English, or any of our hundred languages. Strangely, the nursing curriculum does not even have this course, which is required of all college students. What it has is a Humanities course entitled World Civilization and Literature. Even as a literature scholar, I am appalled by the idea that literature represents world civilization. We literary scholars may be arrogant, but we are not that arrogant!

The whole point of a GENERAL Education Curriculum is that it is for everybody, regardless of major. Why did the so-called curriculum experts in Nursing fool around with the GEC? Nursing educators may be geniuses in nursing, but they are clearly idiots when it comes to literary studies.

Here is a case where CHED’s left hand does not know what its right hand is doing. It is time for newly-appointed CHED Chair Emmanuel Angeles to make things right. Right now!

NEXT EXPORT MAJOR: Now that the nursing boom seems to be over and high school graduates are still dreaming of working overseas, universities should start rethinking their education courses and make these export-oriented.

Education courses right now are geared towards producing teachers for the public school system. DepEd Secretary Lapus, however, has announced that, for 2009, the department can hire only 10,000 teachers. Even if DepEd were given the extra money it is asking from Congress, it would need only 40,000 teachers to fill all its vacancies.

We produce a lot more than 10,000 or even 40,000 education graduates. Where will these graduates go? Instead of ending up as domestic helpers in other countries, education graduates should be trained to teach abroad.

This means, for example, adding courses such as American History, American Educational System, British Educational System, Chinese Educational System, Chinese History, Mandarin, and Arabic to our present Education curriculum, perhaps not as required courses but certainly as electives.

There is no question that the country needs foreign remittances. If the remittances from nurses will no longer be forthcoming, we could export our teachers. The United States has already indicated that it needs almost a million (mostly foreign) teachers to teach mathematics, science, and special education.

Opportunity knocks! Be a teacher and see the world!

“WORDS OF THE DAY” (English/Filipino) for next week’s elementary school classes: Nov. 10 Monday: 1. bone/ubas, 2. church/uban, 3. loss/ukit, 4. candle/uk-ok, 5. simple/ugali, 6. hospital/uhay; Nov. 11 Tuesday: 1. come/ubi, 2. cord/ubod, 3. store/ugat, 4. till/uhog, 5. level/ulan, 6. overseas/ulalo; Nov. 12 Wednesday: 1. down/ubo, 2. side/ubos, 3. sweet/uhaw, 4. wave/ulam, 5. liquid/ulap, 6. estero/ulang; Nov. 13 Thursday: 1. blow/uli, 2. cake/uling, 3. swim/ulat, 4. measure/ulit, 5. chili/unggoy, 6. parallel/ulinig; Nov. 15 Friday: 1. back/ulo, 2. shelf/umaga, 3. stop/una, 4. humor/unos, 5. sponge/umis, 6. probable/umang. The numbers after the dates indicate grade level. The dates refer to the official calendar for public elementary schools. For definitions of the words in Filipino, consult UP Diksiyonaryong Filipino.