The critical state  of the nation's education

It is very difficult for the president to decide what to tell the people in his SONA about education. One of the gravest errors of PBBM, as appointing authority, was to assign the Education portfolio to a politician lawyer, and not to a career and professional educator. That appointment was putting a square peg in a round hole.

This was the post that used to be occupied by such iconic educators as Carlos P. Romulo, Claro M. Recto, Camilo Osias, Dr. Francisco Benitez, Dr O.D. Corpuz, Dr. Jaime Laya, Bro. Andrew Gonzales, Bro. Armin Luistro, Raul Roco, Dr. Armand Fabella, Dr. Isidro Cariño, Dr. Lourdes Quisumbing and such illustrious men and women as Dr. Alejandro Roces, Dr. Gregorio Hernandez, Pastor Endencia and Dr. Teodoro Evangelista. With due respect, what experience has the former mayor of Davao City in the field of education? Has she even handled one class as a teacher or professor? I am not insulting, I am only asking. Education should not be entrusted to politicians.

Well, of course, we love Inday Sara, and there's nothing personal about this. But education should be left to educators. As secretary of DepEd, Inday does not have any unit in education. She has had absolutely no training on the theories and practices of education. Look, she focuses on appointing generals as undersecretaries and assistant secretaries, bypassing career education educators, red-tagging the ACT teachers, and using massive intelligence funds to run after teachers who have ideologies.

At least, with all his imperfections, Inday Sara's dad had the good sense to appoint a doctorate degree holder, a UP graduate school professor, Dr. Leomor Magtolis Briones, as DepEd secretary. Inday Sara, with due respect, is a pure political appointee.

What is the state of Philippine education? Inday Sara has nothing to do with this because our dismal education performance is the cumulative result of decades of decadence in the quality of our education system. That is why an expert should have been assigned to clean up the mess. In 2018, the Philippines ranked number 79 out of 79 participating countries in the PISA or the Program for International Student Assessment. Imagine, we got the lowest. We were beaten by poorer and more remote African, Middle Eastern, and South American countries too. We are below the level of satisfactory in the eyes of the world's global standards evaluators. And now, we give education to a traditional politician? We must hate ourselves that much.

Our education system is elitist, exclusive to the rich and the powerful. The poor and the voiceless do not have access to the high standard education of Ateneo, La Salle, and even UP, which is funded by the peoples' money. There is no equitable access to quality education. The infrastructures there are below par as the construction was assigned to corrupt politicians and contractors. The teachers are overworked, underpaid, and unmotivated. Administrators are more political than professional. I should know. I have been a professor for more than 40 years. My late parents were both mountain village public school teachers. They were always harassed by petty superiors and the students came to school malnourished, badly clothed, and lacking in support from poverty-stricken families and poor, neglected village communities.

The Filipinos are badly educated because our education system is one of the worst in the world. We cannot compete with Thais, Vietnamese, and Malaysians because their leaders do not put politics into their education systems. The poor quality of our education is due to bad politics, bad leadership, and lack of true professionalism in managing our education system. We need 20 more years to catch up with the rest of the world. And that is assuming that our political leaders will be the first ones to educate themselves well.

The way things are going, there is no question why we are now number six in ASEAN when we used to be number one in 1967 when that alliance was founded. The president should tell this truth in the SONA and not embellish our mediocrity with some sugarcoated hyperbole and by the speechwriters' creative spins. Our education situation is in a mess. The sooner we accept the truth the better for us.