Erap the Second

In the magical realist country called the Philippines, anything can happen. In what would be the cruellest twist of fate as far as the crowd that ousted him is concerned, Joseph “Erap” Estrada could win the elections, since the two bickering frontrunners could conceivably knock each other out of contention.

Had Erap’s term as President not been, ahh, so rudely interrupted, his policies on education could have been even more far-reaching. You have to study the history of educational policies in the country to know what I mean.

Despite changes in Malacañang and in name (Division, Office, or Ministry), the Department of Education has remained remarkably stable for a century. Major changes in policy (such as number of years of schooling, entering age, medium of instruction, start of the academic year, even subject offerings) have been few and far between.

In general, Education Secretaries have been educators, used to thinking in decades rather than four or six-year terms. After all, teachers do not teach students how to survive in the next two or three years, but how to be useful citizens after graduation years from now. A Grade One teacher prepares her pupils for life 14 years from the time they are in her classroom. A college teacher of management courses teaches students what to do when they become managers ten or so years after entering the job market as fresh graduates.

It is safe to say that, despite the untimely death of Brother Andrew Gonzalez, Erap’s alter ego as Education Secretary, Erap’s educational policies will continue if the unthinkable happens and Erap once again becomes President (unthinkable as far as the EDSA III participants are concerned, but according to the surveys, extremely desirable to numerous others).

What did Erap I initiate that we can expect Erap II to continue?

Erap (since Erap can rightly claim credit for all of his alter ego’s accomplishments) trimmed down the number of learning areas, following more successful foreign educational systems.

He limited the purchase of textbooks to only five major fields of study, thus improving the textbook per student ratio in those areas.

He brought down the cost of textbooks a full 54.5% by cleaning up the bidding process, earning praise from the World Bank, which proclaimed the Philippines an example to the world of a corruption-free textbook purchase system. He prohibited the purchase of supplementary instructional materials, thus reserving the entire budget for textbooks only for textbooks. To stop the illegal trade in textbooks (booksellers were reselling books already paid for by the government), he ordered a sign “Not For Sale” printed on all textbooks.

He ordered textbooks made for the blind. He exempted “crippled, neurologically handicapped, visually and hearing impaired” students from national exams. He strengthened schools for the gifted. He improved what is called Special Education.

Learning from research findings by the Summer Institute of Linguistics as well as numerous scholars around the world, he changed the medium of instruction in the first three grades to the three lingua franca (regional or common languages), namely, Cebuano, Ilocano, and Tagalog. What he called the Lingua Franca Education Project was expanded by Raul Roco (adding more languages to the list of approved mediums of instruction and increasing the number of pilot schools) and Jesli Lapus (extending the use of the Mother Tongue to all schools and all levels of basic education).

He ordered schools to have double and triple sessions to accommodate the growing student population.

He started supplying schools with computers and internet capabilities.

He negotiated for tailor-made degree programs for public school teachers in prestigious universities.

He ensured that, despite the culture of borrowing that prevailed (and still prevails) in DepEd, every teacher would get at least P2,000 take-home pay every month.

He started a Nonformal Education Accreditation and Equivalency program for drop-outs and out-of-school youth and adults.

He started a computerized management