The new General Education Curriculum

Released last July 4 was Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Memorandum Order No. 20, series of 2013, entitled “General Education Curriculum: Holistic Understandings, Intellectual and Civic Competencies.” This is the memo that mandates the new General Education Curriculum (GEC).

The “Background and Rationale” section of CMO 20 refers to the Constitution (for its legal basis), CMO No. 2 series 2011 (which establishes CHED’s thrust of moving towards learning competency-based standards and limits GEC to only 36 units), the College Readiness Standards (CHED Resolution No. 298-2011), and CMO 59 series 1996 (the old GEC).

Basically, CMO 20 mandates a paradigm shift in the way Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) will handle General Education (GE).

Let us examine each major or new provision of CMO 20 one by one.

Article 1 (“Curriculum Overview”) starts with the sentence “General Education is the portion of the curriculum common to all undergraduate students regardless of their major.”

This sentence removes the distinction between humanities majors and science majors previously institutionalized by CMO 59 and CHED Memorandum No. 4 series 1997, popularly known as GEC-A and GEC-B. In the past, for example, humanities, social sciences, and communication majors took up two required Literature subjects, one required Arts Appreciation subject, and one required Philosophy subject; students of other majors did not have to take any required Literature, Arts, or Philosophy subject, but only three unspecified Humanities subjects. The humanities, social sciences, and communication majors also took up 9 units of English and 9 units of Filipino; other majors took up only 6 units of each. The Social Sciences subjects were also enumerated in GEC-A (Basic Economics, General Psychology, Politics and Governance, Society and Culture); non-humanities, social sciences, and communication majors could take any social science subject, not necessarily those named in GEC-A.

The new GEC also articulates the philosophy underlying general education, something the two previous memos merely assumed. For example, CMO 20 says that “general education is distinct from specialized learning. The former introduces students to different ways of knowing; the latter focuses on a particular discipline.”

The two former GECs had a number of subjects that were taught by experts in one discipline, such as economics, psychology, political science, and sociology. The new GEC does away with these discipline-based subjects. From now on, in other words, only those students majoring in political science will take an introductory course in Politics and Governance. Similarly, only those students majoring in economics will take up Basic Economics. Only those students majoring in Psychology will take up General Psychology.

It may be recalled that these specialized subjects are also not in the GE subjects taken over by the K to 12 curriculum. In short, these subjects will now no longer be taught to every student. They will be taught only to students majoring in those particular disciplines.

That does not mean, however, that none of the issues raised in these discipline-based subjects will be taken up by all students. We will see, when we get to the actual subject offerings of the new GEC, as well as the subject offerings in K to 12 (particularly those in Senior High School), that the most crucial issues are, in fact, taken up in more encompassing and interdisciplinary subjects (such as Personal Development in Senior High School). It is not the issues themselves that have been changed, but the way these issues are handled.

The introductory paragraphs of Article 1 also establish the reason GE is still in our tertiary curriculum. That sounds like something obvious but, in fact, the Technical Panel on General Education (TPGE), which drafted the new GEC, had to decide whether to follow the American model (which includes a year of GE in all degree courses) or the European model (which does not include GE and, therefore, takes only three years for a typical undergraduate degree).

After much debate and consultation, the TPGE decided to recommend, and CHED eventually agreed, to have GE in every tertiary degree course. Instead of mandating two years of GE, however, as previously required by GEC-A and GEC-B, the TPGE decided to follow the American model of having only one year’s worth of GE subjects.

Why did the TPGE recommend that there be GE in Philippine colleges and universities? Article 1 answers this question: “The fundamental purpose of higher education, therefore, is not only to develop knowledgeable and competent graduates in a particular field, but also well-rounded individuals who appreciate knowledge in a general sense, are open-minded because of it, secure in their identities as individuals and as Filipinos, and cognizant of their role in the life of the nation and the larger community.”

This statement of purpose should put to rest the objection of some quarters that Philippine education has become job-oriented or that national development is the main goal of higher education. The statement clearly says that the main reason for GE (and college itself) is the individual student, who should be expected to appreciate knowledge, be open-minded, be secure in oneself and in our country, and responsible to the country and the world. In short, the new GEC wants every college graduate to be a complete person. In the phrase coined by the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, the college graduate is expected not to be a “learned ignoramus.” (To be continued)