EDITORIAL - Surprise, surprise

Reps. Pablo Garcia and Cutie del Mar led the vehement opposition of Cebuanos to the K+12 proposal of the Department of Education in a public hearing conducted by the House committee on education in Cebu last Thursday. The K+12 program of the DepEd intends to add two more years to basic education, plus kindergarten.

The vehement opposition is surprising, not because there is no basis for the opposition (on the contrary, there is every reason in the world to reject it at this time), but because it is contrary to the claim of education secretary Armin Luistro that in his own public hearings, there is a nationwide unanimous approval of his proposal.

If you do not know whom to believe, consider this: The results of the public hearing conducted by the House committee on education are more credible because it was open and was covered by the media. As to Luistro's public hearings, nobody knew about them until he made the claim.

And those who registered their opposition in the House public hearing had names and faces and were thus verifiable. Luistro's unanimous voices of support were faceless and nameless, and if they were not figments of his imagination, they very well could have been all teachers and DepEd personnel who naturally could not say no to Luistro.

Luistro cannot insist on his contrived support and play deaf and blind to the actual and real opposition that exists nationwide against his plan, whose only justification is that most other nations are doing the same. Luistro must learn to listen to the voices of reason and not forge ahead simply because he hates to be contradicted.

The plan to add to more years to basic education is actually good. But it must be implemented only when the educational system is ready for it. As articulated by both Garcia and del Mar, as well as the millions of others that Luistro refuses to see and hear, no amount of additional time will be enough if the educational system is infirm and deficient.

If Luistro wants his plan to work, he must first make sure that he lays the right foundation needed to support and sustain his plan. For a brilliant idea to work, one must not focus only on the expected gains to be derived from the idea. More importantly, one needs to consider everything that can possibly go wrong with the plan. As it is now, there is only everything that can go wrong.