by Alex Roldan
It was a slap on the face of DepEd Secretary Armin Luistro after realizing that though his Spanish, technically speaking is correct, he was off beam as to the meaning of the Spanish words he spoke to the students in front of him.
He was simply trying to impress on them his knowledge of the Spanish language when in fact the local dialect, chavacano, although Spanish-influenced, is far, far from being the language spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Luistro addressed the students of the Zamboanga National High School “Muchachos y muchachas…” when he asked them to return to their classrooms. To the students and teachers present it sounded like a putdown, nay, an insult, for those two words are the equivalent of “servants” in English, or utosan. The correct term should have been jovenes, which refers to young people or the youth.
To put it simply, Sec. Luistro was not lost in translation, he had not forgotten his Spanish when he apologized later for the faux pas, but he ignored the reality and stuck to what he thought was right, and I hope it was a valuable lesson to help him improve his education policy directions.
You may be wondering what I mean. I am referring to one of the hottest issues in the educational system of our country – adding two years to high school. Sec. Luistro must have thought that this is the correct way to improve the declining quality of education. I am sorry for his blooper, but this brings me to my point that not all things one believes are right are exactly that — right. If in other countries, the 12 year period from primary, intermediate through high school may be appropriate for them, but not necessarily so in the Philippine context.
Frankly speaking, the secretary’s proposition that “the additional years in school” before a student can qualify for enrollment in college is beneficial is flaed, to put it mildly.. Believing that after high school the student would be ready for employment is too simplistic and absurd. I can’t comprehend the logic behind this idea – that by the time a student is 18 he/she has a better chance of getting a good job and would be in the best position to support his college education if he or she wishes to.
The real problem is quality of education, and who would believe that the magic bullet is an additional two years in school? The country’s education system clearly needs to be overhauled, but the good secretary fails to recognize or accept it as a fact. The school curricula have to be re-evaluated, the teachers’ capabilities need to be strengthened, that textbooks, along with the errors, are too few, rooms are overcrowded, so on and so forth!
The quality of education in this country is so dismal that recent studies revealed that many of our countrymen, though they can read or write, remain functionally illiterate. Meaning, they know how to read but have lack comprehension of what they are reading. They have gone to school but their comprehension level of what they read and hear from their teachers remains very low.
This is the state of our human resources that reflects the state of our education system, and should be the focus of the secretary of education instead of adapting what other countries are doing. As I have said, other countries are right by adding two years to their basic schooling because their condition calls for it – that after 18 the kids have to leave their homes and survive on their own. But such is not the case in the Philippines. Kids are forced to stay with their parents because even if they have completed college and are already of legal age, they can’t survive outside because there are not enough jobs to make them survive on their own. Even if there are jobs, they don’t qualify because of the quality of knowledge and skills they bring with them.
Those who leave their homes early could still end up as muchachos and muchahas. So, do a good number of our degree holders who in their wildest dreams never thought they would become OFWs doing menial jobs abroad.
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