EDITORIAL - Head in the clouds

Education secretary Armin Luistro, interviewed on ANC Wednesday, made two disclosures that on the surface were welcome but on deeper analysis exposes how shallow the thinking is at his department on how to address the deep-rooted problems facing Philippine education.

The first “welcome” disclosure was that starting June this schoolyear, every child in school will have his own textbook. Luistro said he himself saw with his own eyes the 60 million textbooks ready for distribution to finally put aside the perennial problem of textbook lack.

But don’t start jumping with joy. Luistro never said this would be a year-on-year development. He never said a thing about the fact that textbooks are changed every year because this is how book publishers make money. Will there be another batch of new books in June 2013?

The other “welcome” disclosure is that there is really no classroom shortage. According to Luistro, classroom lack only occurs in certain heavily congested areas in urban centers but that in many areas in the provinces there are classrooms that do not even have students.

What Luistro appears to be saying is that because the proportion of existing classrooms in relation to the number of students nationwide is just about even, then everything must be okay and there is nothing to worry about.

What Luistro apparently failed to see is that students in jampacked city schools in, say, Manila cannot be moved to countryside schools in, say, Dinagat Island. It does not follow that just because a classroom in Dinagat only has 10 students, 40 students from Manila can move in.

Luistro must look beyond what the statistics tell him and get a real feel of what the situation is on the ground. He needs to shed his strictly academician background and learn to appreciate the art of making deductions on the scene.

And this is precisely why the apprehensions continue regarding the government’s K+12 program which DepEd insists on implementing starting this schoolyear despite strong opposition from those who are to be directly affected by the program.

For while the program is good on paper, it primarily considers only the destination, of how great things will be when we get there, but absolutely without regard for the getting there, of the challenges and pitfalls along the way that we may not be equipped and ready to surmount.