“We used to be the leader of the pack. Our neighbors used to send their students here to study. What went wrong?”
THE quality of our country’s education continues to bedevil us all.
One recent study shows that our K-12 graduates cannot seem to understand what they are reading.
This is a constant source of national embarrassment for the country where a solution appears elusive.
Why has the home of the oldest University in Asia fallen so far behind? We used to be the leader of the pack. Our neighbors used to send their students here to study. What went wrong?
There are a lot of theories as to why we are where we are right now.
All these started when “bright” people in our DepEd started to tinker with what language to use for instruction.
They started to question why we should not be using our own native national language Pilipino instead of English which has been the language used in our public schools since their establishment at the turn of the 20th century.
These people, however, forgot that all school textbooks were all written in English and none in Pilipino.
Their solution was to ramp up the printing of textbooks in English which were found out later to be full of grammatical errors.
Later on, some people in DepEd thought that it would be better to start teaching school children with the local vernacular where they are from before going to Pilipino and then English.
Needless to say, this made the problem worse.
To understand what a book in English is saying, one must first be proficient in the language. Furthermore, the quality of our teachers have also deteriorated significantly.
So, we should not be too surprised if our K-12 cannot understand what they are reading.
How could they understand something that is written in a language wherein they are not proficient?
If they started in English when they first got to school like what it used to be, then we would be surprised if they could not understand what they are reading.
But they started with the vernacular then Pilipino and then much later in English and were taught by teachers with very low proficiency in English themselves.
In all the analysis that have been done by our so-called education experts, no one seems to be pointing to the fact that one major part of the problem that needs a solution is how to upgrade the quality of our teachers.
Maybe, they continue to refuse to acknowledge this problem because it is one of their own making.
Look at what DepEd did to the Teachers Camp in Baguio.
The Teachers Camp was originally established by the American colonial government for American teachers to have a place of respite from the summer heat in the lowlands while at the same time have a training facility to improve their qualifications.
This continued when we gained our independence up to the 1970s.
Every summer, hundreds of public school teachers all over the country went to the Teachers Camp to spend two months to upgrade their skills.
This, however, suddenly stopped for reasons only known by the DepEd.
Today, Teachers Camp is a bed and breakfast facility for tourists. The place is also being invaded by squatters and, before long, the reservation will be a big squatter colony instead of a training facility.
It’s symptomatic to what has happened to our educational system.
A country with the most universities in Asia if not the world continue to turn out low quality high school graduates.
If not for the private schools where parents would rather pay to send their children, our educational system would be a complete disaster.
It’s sad but that is where we are.
The simple solution is to start teaching in English as soon as our children gets to school and have a crush program to train our teachers to be proficient in the language. It’s a slow process but that’s what we get for years of missteps.
We often hear that one reason why we do not have good teachers or are losing the good ones to foreign schools is low pay.
This is unfortunately true.
This is, therefore, one area that the government should address as a solution in upgrading teacher quality.