Yolanda, DepEd, and K + 12

As a result of the devastation from Yolanda, the strongest typhoon to hit land on record, there is a need to build a total of 2,313 new classrooms to replace those destroyed, this according to the Department of Education. There is, at the same time, a need to rehabilitate and repair a total of 17,335 classrooms damaged by the typhoon after it ravaged the Visayas on November 8, 2013.

What the figures suggest is that Yolanda either destroyed or damaged a total of 19,648 classrooms. What the same figures also suggest is that, if there are on the average 50 students per classroom, then a total of 982,400 students have been affected by Yolanda. This means that nearly a million students either completely lost their classrooms or have to make do with what is left of them.

Now you may ask what the government, and the DepEd in particular, has done to address this huge problem. According to no less than education secretary Armin Luistro, the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the classrooms is proceeding but proceeding admittedly slow. Of the 2,313 new classsrooms needing to be built, only 101 have been completed.

That's right. You heard it straight from the horse's mouth. Of 2,313 new classrooms needing to be built, only 101 have been completed. Wow. And that is just the new classrooms needing to be built. Of the 17,335 damaged classrooms needing to be repaired or rehabilitated, only 833 have been completed. That is a total of only 934 classrooms either newly built or repaired.

At an average of 50 students per classroom, that means only 46,700 students out of the nearly a million who have been displaced can go back to studying properly under conditions conducive to learning. That means the remaining 935,700 students displaced by Yolanda will have to continue studying in hot and humid tents, if they are lucky, or under mango trees, if obviously they are not.

What that means further is that still nearly a million students will continue with their studies under the most horrible conditions, conditions that clearly are not in keeping with what the students hope or expect to normally learn in a normal classroom -- that is if they ever get to learn anything at all. And yet, guess what -- I do not think anyone would have the heart to fail any of these students, regardless of whether they learn anything or not.

I am pretty sure they will all be passed on to the next higher level. After all, it is not their fault that Yolanda destroyed their classrooms. They cannot be punished for an act of God. In such a situation, especially in predominantly Christian Philippines, compassion and humanitarian considerations will likely prevail over academic realities.

And this brings me to the real point of this article, which is not really about how Yolanda destroyed so many classrooms. My point is that this is yet another compelling reason why it is such a great folly to proceed with the government's K + 12 program, a program that while indeed possessed with lofty ideals such as better education that is at par with global standards, is in reality not in congruence with the Philippines' capacity to implement it properly and efficiently.

The problem with K + 12 is not that it is bad. It is not. In fact it is good. The problem is that the Philippines is simply not ready for it. Not only does it severely lack classrooms (lacking them even before Yolanda, and lacking them even more as a result thereof), it also lacks teachers. And not just teachers but good quality teachers.

The bottomline is that the Philippines needs to first improve the standard of education in all its levels and aspects before it even thinks of embarking on such an ambitious program such as K + 12. If the Philippines refuses to heed all well-meaning advice to the contrary, it will only be adding two more years of below par learning to basic education.

As they say in this age of information -- garbage in, garbage out. If the Philippines insists on adding more years to education without first improving that education, it will only succeed in producing substandard graduates that the world, employing global standards, will ultimately reject. For as it is in education as it is in life, it is not the number of years but the quality of those years.

Just consider those victims of typhoon Yolanda. For all intents and purposes, they have lost an entire year of education. And yet it would be unChristian, even inhuman, to fail them, notwithstanding the fact that they learned nothing. So they will be moving on, all nearly a million strong of them, with the rest of the entire student population on to the next grade level.

And when the K + 12 program fully kicks in by 2016 and then begins to parade its first batch of graduates two years thereafter, there will be among them nearly a million who did not have the same preparation as the rest, a preparation that, given the substandard quality of our education, is already spotty to begin with. And yet they will all be graduated because that is all that this government really cares about -- to have 12 years of basic education just because everyone has.

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