Villar on education

If democracy works on the principle that every voter votes according to his or her self-interest, with the majority of the voters having their will (“the greatest good for the greatest number”), then I should vote for Manny Villar. After all, since I lived for a long time in Parañaque and now live in Alabang, Villar is the only one among the presidential candidates who has done anything personally beneficial to me.

He has given the Parañaque-Alabang-Las Piñas area something truly useful – a road. Of course, he made money, legitimately or (if the Senate is to be believed) illegitimately, but the road nevertheless exists, making travel easy and pleasant for me and my neighbors.

There is something about Villar, however, that bothers me, and it is not just the doubts raised about his integrity. It is his lack of a clear education agenda.

In his speech to the Makati Business Club on Feb. 10, he said this about education: “I will work hard to raise education standards, build more schools, and reward deserving teachers. I intend to accomplish this by spending more for education. I will also try to create a more competitive environment among schools, among teachers, so that those that perform well are rewarded, and those that don’t are held accountable.”

Nobody can disagree with these motherhood statements, precisely because they are motherhood statements. The devil (or the angel) is in the details.

What, exactly, is Villar going to do to “raise education standards”? What is the score we will aim for in the 2011 TIMSS? In 2003, we were way below the international average, scoring higher only than Botswana, Saudi Arabia, Ghana, and South Africa. We were the worst country in Asia. Are we going to try to overtake Indonesia (also below average but still way above us) or do we aim to be at par with the five best school systems in the world (Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Japan)?

How many more schools do we have to build? No matter how much we try, even if we had lots of money (which we don’t), we will never catch up with our growing population. Do not forget that we do not even educate all Filipino children, since most of them drop out long before they finish schooling.

How much is “more” as far as education is concerned? A couple of billions is nothing when it comes to education.

What is a “deserving teacher”? What is a “more competitive environment” when it comes to teachers “performing well”? Do we measure performance by the number of students who pass a class? Is a teacher who passes everybody better than one who refuses to pass students who cannot read? Do we measure a high school’s performance by the percentage of students who graduate, or do we measure it by the percentage of graduates who pass the UPCAT? Without details, the statement is meaningless.

One thing going for Villar, however, is his track record in helping education. I do not mean the bills he sponsored (he holds the record for most bills filed), since these bills tend to be cooperative ventures rather than individual efforts. I mean his work outside Congress (documented on various websites).

He nationalized the Las Piñas High School. He launched the “Sagip Bukas” Drug Preventions Program in all the schools in Las Piñas. He organized the “Manpower on Wheels” Program, “a livelihood training school housed in a van to accommodate poor students who could not go to schools without fare money”; the program has produced more than 5,000 graduates. He sponsors the “Sipag at Tiyaga Caravan Kaalaman,” a “livelihood training program for those who want to venture into business. It travels all over the country conducting livelihood seminars.”

One thing definitely not going for Villar is his insistence that English should be the sole medium of instruction on all levels of education. Not only does he violate the Constitution with this stand of his (and he will be expected, as President, to uphold our fundamental law), but he reveals his ignorance of educational research and international agreements, as well as of what really goes on in the classroom.

For someone running on a platform of helping the poor, he should first find out for himself what our poor public school teachers face every day of their lives – equally poor students that are forced to learn a foreign language even before they master their own. And that is one of the main reasons these students, most of whom drop out of school anyway and will never go abroad, remain poor all their lives.

To get my vote, Villar has to change his view about the medium of instruction. Unfortunately for him, his wife Cynthia is an advocate of the unconstitutional and ridiculous English-only bill. His loyalty to his wife’s advocacy should end where his loyalty to the Constitution begins.

Still on the issue of medium of instruction, Villar at least is better than Gibo. Cynthia’s bill specifies that the first three elementary years may be taught in English, Filipino, or the mother tongue. Gibo wants to use only English from pre-school. Although better educated than Villar, Gibo knows less about education.