What Kurt Vonnegut would say about K to 12
There is a proposal by certain sectors to review the K to 12 program of the government, which added two years to high school beginning in 2016. Many are happy with the proposed review, thinking it will lead to the eventual scrapping of the controversial program. I am the father of a daughter who belonged to the pioneer batch of K to 12, graduates and had vehemently opposed its implementation. But now I oppose its scrapping.
I was opposed to K to 12 not because it was bad. I think all education is good. I opposed K to 12 at the time it was implemented because no one was ready for it in 2016. Classrooms were sorely lacking. Not a single teacher was prepared to handle senior high school classes. Appropriate instructional materials were non-existent. Parents did not have the budget for two more years of high school.
The only reason the government rammed K to 12 down the throats of everyone despite the loud nationwide opposition to it was because the president at the time, Noynoy Aquino, said so. And what Noynoy wants, he must get. And with his six-year term fast running out, Noynoy realized he had nothing to show for it except the legacy of the Luneta bus hostage crisis, Mamasapano, and Yolanda. So ready or not, K to 12 was let go on us.
To temper the outrage, the Noynoy government bought public acquiescence with a few paltry thousands in tuition subsidies. This, plus the fact that there was nothing anyone can really do when the government puts its foot down on something made the bribe partly successful. What cannot be tempered, bought, or recovered were the two lost years the pioneer batch of K to 12 graduates sacrificed in the altar to Noynoy's ego.
I can only speak for my daughter although what I will say now is probably true everywhere else. At an assessment meeting called by the private school my daughter went to just prior to the graduation of the pioneer batch, the directress bluntly acknowledged to all present that it was all touch and go for those pioneering two years. Everyone, the teachers included, tried to learn what they can as they went, which is to say nearly nothing.
Now a review is being proposed. Fine. Everything needs to be reviewed from time to time. But if the point of the review is to scrap it, I would be among those who would oppose it. Let us not add salt to the injury inflicted. What shortcomings and infirmities there certainly are in the program, it is already too late in the day to mope over them.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. in "The Sirens of Titan" had the most appropriate thing to say that applies to K to 12: "Anybody who has travelled this far on a fool's errand has no choice but to preserve the honor of fools by completing the errand." So no to scrapping. Let us all grin and bear it. Or as we Cebuanos love to joke: "I told you not to go to, you go to, now look at (giingnan ta ka nga ayaw pag-adto, ni-adto g’yud ka. Na, karon tan-awa)."
What needs to happen in case there is a review is to make K to 12 better, to make it meaningful, beneficial and relevant to those who take it. And if only to make things truly right, and if it is still possible to prosecute those responsible for implementing it at the time they did, thereby causing untold and irreparable losses and damage to hundreds of thousands, they must be prosecuted to the seat of their pants.
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