Real challenge in Philippine education
By
Ambeth Ocampo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 22:42:00 01/17/2008
Filed Under: Education, history
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 22:42:00 01/17/2008
Filed Under: Education, history
Sen.
Edgardo Angara delivered the Sixth Jaime V. Ongpin Annual Memorial lecture at
the Ateneo Professional Schools in Rockwell Center to a full auditorium last
Wednesday. With the theme ?Education is Our Future,? he spoke about the need to
nurture Science, Technology, Engineering, and Innovation (STEI) in Philippine
education through massive government funding, institutional linkages, and
public policy, thereby jump-starting our arrested development. Compared with
other countries, we have fallen behind in this area, but that was not the
depressing part of the lecture that ended with the optimistic line, ?the future
is within our reach.?
That
education is important, that education is essential to our development as a
people and a nation is an accepted fact. But the data presented by the senator
on our present standing in STEI was horrendous. We have lagged a long way since
Anacleto del Rosario demonstrated the use of electric light in the Ateneo
Municipal in Intramuros in the late 19th century. In a dark age largely
illuminated by candles, kalburo, gas and Jesuits, the first light bulb in the
Philippines blazed for a few seconds creating a sensation in Manila. But what
did Filipinos do with that enthusiasm? Did we develop electric light? We did
nothing.
References
to technology in the correspondence of our heroes provide engaging reading. For
example, when Jose Rizal made his first trip abroad in 1883 and took an
elevator in Marseilles, he wrote home and described his first ride in a lift to
his bewildered sisters in Calamba, who could not imagine what was this box that
brought a passenger up and down different levels of a building without walking.
Then we have Marcelo H. del Pilar who had a telephone installed in the
editorial office of La Solidaridad, and wrote home to describe how his voice
could travel long distances, which was beyond the imagination of his wife
Tsanay in Bulacan. Emilio Aguinaldo was one of the first Filipinos to ride a
submarine and an airplane, and it is unfortunate that he did not record his
impressions.
Airplanes,
elevators, cell phones, the Internet and space travel are part of our lives
today. We just have to look back to appreciate the change, to realize that the
gap between science fiction and reality is fast closing
While
I agreed with most of the points Angara made in his long but solid lecture, I
felt the real challenge lay much deeper, and was only hinted at in the lecture.
Our real challenge is improving the present state of basic education. If we
enumerate all the problems of Philippine education, we will take days of
delight in self-flagellation that ends nowhere. Rather than complain, I teach
at the Ateneo de Manila University and the University of the Philippines, if
only to do my bit in the effort to shape our future. Looking at my students in
the classroom, I stare literally, eyeball to eyeball with our future.
It
was unfortunate that no reference was made in the lecture to the 1925 report of
the Monroe Commission on Philippine Education because while this may seem like
an archival document, reading is humbling because we still confront the basic
problems they identified in 1925. There are two ways to look at the Monroe
Report. One is to praise the Monroe Commission for its foresight, because like
clairvoyants they were able to see our present problems 83 years ago. The other
way to interpret the report is to accept the sad fact that Philippine education
has not changed very much since 1925. As I keep telling people, do not blame
history for seeming to repeat itself, we are to blame because we repeat
history.
Education
has always held out hope for the future because it creates an idea or illusion
that it is a means for upward mobility. Education provides the means to go up
the social and economic ladder based on merit and achievement. Education is
seen as a means to break the status quo. Education tells us that things do not
have to be the way they are. This may explain why Filipino parents push their
children to earn university degrees despite our recent placement test results
that reveal that less than 10 percent of graduating high school students have
the aptitude for a university track, and that most of our graduates are better
suited for entrepreneurial or vocational futures. It is unfortunate that some
parents see the placement tests as discriminatory, and something that goes
against the right to higher education. But then we must match desire with
aptitude.
That
we need STEI is not an issue. Rather we must improve our basic education -- our
elementary and high school levels -- to prepare young people not just for STEI
but for whatever career they have the skills for. While it is good to aspire
for a university education, it has a negative side. This desire for higher
learning has spawned a lucrative industry in diploma mills that should be
closed. Then there are the unusual and redundant number of state colleges and
universities that have sprouted like mushrooms all over the country. While many
of these SUCs are doing well, these should not blind us to the fact that we are
spreading our resources thinly rather than, say, investing heavily in the
University of the Philippines and supporting existing campuses outside the
Diliman Republic.
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