EDITORIAL - Solving the classroom problem, Luistro style

Remember Efren Peñaflorida? Peñaflorida placed the Philippines on the world map in a good way in 2009 when he was declared CNN Hero of the Year for his pushcart classroom project that provided education to poor street children.

What Peñaflorida did exhibited one of the finer things Filipinos are capable of doing in rare times of inspiration and brilliance, and for him to continue with his noble work long after the honor has slipped into distant memory is indeed laudable.

But the work of Peñaflorida is best only as an individual initiative. Or on a slightly larger scale with the help of certain organizations. But whether individually or on a slightly bigger scale, it can never replace government responsibility to massively provide classrooms.

Unfortunately, while the country is saddled by a massive lack of classrooms despite the bare-faced untruths and deceptive arguments to the contrary peddled by Education Secretary Armin Luistro, here comes his DepEd joining Peñaflorida in a “Kariton Klasrum” initiative.

If Luistro wants a share of Peñaflorida's lustre, he can take the CNN hero's initiative as an inspiration and embark on a massive classroom building program. He can take heart in the fact that if one man can do it, there is no reason why an entire government department cannot.

There is a massive lack of classrooms despite the claims of Luistro that the shortage is only in the cities and that in the rural areas there are even classrooms without students. What does Luistro propose to do, move the extra students from Manila to fill empty rooms in Mogpog?

Contrary to what Luistro claims, the DepEd says Cebu alone needs 5,676 classrooms, 3,016 of them by its nine cities, and 2,660 by the rest of the municipalities. This according to DepEd Region 7 information officer Clara Falconi (The Freeman, April 18, 2013).

No less than President Aquino corroborated this in his visit to Cebu last Friday when he promised to build 66,000 classrooms by the end of this year. Why build so many if no shortage exists? Even Senator Loren Legarda set aside P146 million from her PDAF for the same purpose.

Yet here is Luistro, living in his dreamworld, pushing someone else's “Kariton Klasrum” project, like applying Bandaid to a bomb injury. The nation's classroom shortage can't be solved by pushcarts Mr. Luistro. And if you want to be a hero, try to be original and leave Efren alone.