EDITORIAL - Education on a tail spin

School openings are always big media events. Every news organization sends people on the ground to record the situation -- what are the student numbers, classroom numbers, how both factor against each other, state of the infrastructure, etc.

Then there are the human interest stories to be reported -- the cost of sending children to school, the sacrifices entailed in obtaining an education, what expectations are nurtured by studies, and so on and so forth.

Then all of these are given a healthy dash of seasoning by what happened as a result of Yolanda, the strongest typhoon on record anywhere in the world, which flattened many areas in the Visayas. Finally, the whole story is summed and wrapped up as the Philippine education situationer, current edition.

It is not clear what happened, but in virtually all of these inter-connected stories, not one seemed to feature the education secretary. If he was ever mentioned, if his word was ever solicited, it must have been relegated to the fringes because, as this was written, he was simply nowhere.

But present or not, the picture that emerged when classes formally opened last Monday should not be something that the education secretary does not know already. As education secretary, he should be on top of things. He should not wait for media to tell him things. Or is it that way?

From the look of things as reported by media, the Philippine education situation is truly bleak, and made even bleaker by the ravages of Yolanda. There was one girl from the town of Tanauan in Leyte who was featured on tv as a sole survivor of the typhoon, having lost her entire family.

The girl will be entering Grade Three. On her own, it is doubtful is she can finish the grade, much less Grade Six. Unless someone adopts her, out of the hundreds, if not thousands, of others similarly orphaned and needing adoption, High School may no longer be an option. And tha't not to mention Senior High School.

You see, there is now in the Philippines a Senior High School, or Grades Eleven and Twelve, imposed against better judgment by the education secretary for no other reason than that other countries are doing it. No problem with that if your educational system is ticking and humming.

But the Philippine educational system is sputtering. What classrooms are being built cannot catch up with a runaway population. Thus, there will always be classes held under mango trees, five students sharing one book full of errors, listening to a teacher whose low wages take her mind to other things.