Gibo Teodoro and education 2

Gibo Teodoro proposes “setting up a special student loan fund under SSS.” He makes the same promise as Noynoy Aquino, whose father Ninoy (with Raul Roco) first conceptualized the Study Now Pay Later scheme that eventually became the GASTPE law. Both Gibo and Noynoy seem blissfully unaware that CHED already has such a program in place.

Gibo agrees that we need “additional years in grade school and high school.” His reason for this proposal, however, shows that he has not really studied the problem. He says, “There’s a lot more to learn now. Students cannot absorb all that knowledge in 10 years.”

That is not true. Filipino students can “absorb all that knowledge” in 10 years, provided teachers know what they are doing. Our high school graduates today routinely qualify for college admission in the US – clear proof that we prepare our students well despite the short length of our basic education.

The reason for extending basic education is foreign pressure. We depend a lot on income from Filipinos working abroad. Many of the countries that hire us have signed various international agreements that specify that basic education should be longer than 10 years. Gibo correctly says that extending basic education is “difficult but there’s no choice.”

Gibo, like Noynoy, says that he is for making all students go through free preschool. Noynoy thinks that we should do this no matter what; Gibo says it depends on the availability of funds. This is one of the key differences between Noynoy and Gibo. Noynoy works on the hope that government will have more money once corruption is curbed. Gibo works on the reality that corruption will not be that easy to eradicate and, therefore, money for preschool may not be there.

Both Gibo and Noynoy realize that literacy has to be achieved through our vernacular languages and not through English, and they both also realize, as Gibo puts it, that “English remains the language of science, technology and diplomacy.” This is one of the major sources of misunderstanding between the mother tongue or Filipino advocates and the business community.

Those (like myself) advocating a change in the medium of instruction from English to our own languages are not saying that we should not learn English. (In fact, I head WIKA while being on the board of the English Speaking Union Philippines. Only those that know nothing about linguistic research find that strange.) There is indisputable research evidence that the best way to learn a foreign language is to use a vernacular language as the medium of instruction. We should learn English, of course, but we should learn it by using a vernacular language as medium of instruction. That is the simplest and most cost-effective way of learning the world’s de facto international language.

Gibo’s take on national competitiveness reveals that he does not have his feet as solidly on the ground as he wants voters to believe. “Do away with degree consciousness for promotions,” he says. “One need not have a master’s degree for leadership skills and institutional knowledge.” We are dealing here with a change in the mindset of hundreds of thousands of business executives. Can you imagine a VP of a Makati firm hiring a public high school graduate to become a manager? In theory, no one needs a master’s or even a bachelor’s degree for leadership (think of Bill Gates, Erap, or some of our taipans), but in real life, companies recruiting or promoting managers always ask for a CV that lists a degree from a university.

Changing the way people think is possible; think of how telecom companies have made us all think that we should be accessible by mobile phone 24/7, when not too long ago not too many Filipinos had landlines. But changing the way Filipino employers think is not possible within the six years of a presidency; think of how long it took banks to realize that bank tellers usually talk to messengers rather than CEOs and, therefore, need not be as good in English as call center representatives.

THOUGHT FOR HOLY WEEK: This week being holy (despite the Filipino way of celebrating it by going to the beach or to Baguio), allow me to share a thought on Christianity. I think that one of the greatest lessons of Christianity is that we cannot have Easter without Lent, ecstasy without agony, joy without suffering, hope without despair.

Candidates peddling hope deliberately downplay the suffering that we need to go through to attain heaven. We are all against corruption, for example, but if we eradicated it, we would all have to pay traffic violation fines and attend driving seminars instead of conveniently bribing a cop, to pay taxes on all the money we earn rather than look for loopholes in the taxation laws, to wade through red tape instead of hiring fixers, and so on. We should learn from our experience with EDSA I: we are still trying to repair the damage done to our country by the Marcos conjugal dictatorship, and Imelda is running for Congress!

Happy Easter, yes, but be prepared to be first crucified.