Values in DepEd's training thrust

DepEd's boss Secretary Jeslie Lapus is currently on the go as he pursues a major thrust in his department: Educational reform. The name of the game is Basic Education Sector Reform Agenda. The fund source: AusAid of the Australian government. It's a big undertaking. With a A$30 million grant (roughly P1.03 billion) this initiative is expected to go a long way towards raising the quality of basic education.

A basic component of BESRA is management training for middle level school officials - district supervisors, principals and head teachers. The idea is to equip these school managers with basic know-how on how to run a school effectively and efficiently. This is an urgent need, needless to say, because these officials whose professional exposure has been basically in the area of education are mostly handicapped when it comes to organizational management.

Such skills as preparing a project feasibility study, crafting a school budget, monitoring a project, analyzing and anticipating organizational problems and others, are generally unknown to teacher-managers. Unknown to them too are government requirements or such concerns as procurement, personnel discipline and development, facilities maintenance, fiscal management and many more.

Without adequate training on these managerial exigencies a school or district head usually fumbles. What is to be done is left undone. Mistakes are committed. And the school operation suffers - and suffers too the quality of learning on the part of its pupils.

We have not seen the training curriculum of DepEd, but we presume that it contains something in the area of values development especially the values of love of country and faith in God. The first value inspires one to invest all his talents and strengths in the service of his country and people. Aware that his wards will join the mainstream of community life in later years, a good school head would spend his waking hours thinking of how to bring out the best in his school kids - physically, mentally, and spiritually.

The second value is an over-encompassing one. It covers the first because serving people is a divine-inspired activity. In fact, doing one's work to the best of one's ability is a way of sanctifying oneself and others, according to Saint Josemaria Escriva. For education people, the most critical area where faith in God is needed is in the conduct of one self as a custodian of his children's future.

Since modeling is a must in values development, school managers should necessarily serve as exemplars of the values they are trying to infuse in their children's mind and heart. Talking may have some effects but if coupled with actual and observable actions the lesson is likely to be absorbed and become a part of one's personality.

This being the case, one assumes that values reorientation is one of the learning chunks in DepEd training curriculum. Without this such activity would be lacking in depth. For of what use is managerial expertise if the manager is bankrupt in the qualities that make for a good person? Education is not only a matter of learning the 3Rs. It is growth and development. It is transformation involving the mind and heart of the educand. The truth is, education is what is left after all the facts and figures have been forgotten.

The trouble with values teaching and learning is that it often degenerates into a cognitive activity focusing on information and not on character change. Values are classified and clustered and their components defined. Situations are given exemplifying each value including their positive and negative impacts upon the individual and the community. The outcome of it all is intellectual exposure sans conviction towards behavioral change. O yes, the school manager becomes an exponent of values clarification, but not necessarily as a values exemplar.

Anyway, Secretary Lapus should be praised for this initiative. We hope his successor will continue pursuing this program, although in DepEd a new secretary always as his own thrust. To recall, Secretary Onofre Corpus trained his sight on education as an instrument of socio-economic development; Secretary Jaime Laya spent his time strategizing teachers' pay increases. Secretary Lourdes Quisumbing was obsessed with values learning, while Secretary Isidro Cariño zeroed in on school building construction and repair. His successor, Ricardo Gloria was high on ecotourism and technology. Gloria was replaced by Secretary Armand Fabella whose focus was curriculum reform, and Secretary Andrew Gonzales, who was installed after Fabella, had his hands full trying to cleanse the sytem.

Anyway again, between now and June 2010, DepEd shall have exposed majority of its middle-level officials to sensible ways of running a school. And that in itself will be a very significant accomplishment.

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