The proposal to remove Ethics in the GE Curriculum is an existential suicide. But I would like to be less philosophical about this. It is another obvious proof of the commercial nature of education in the country. Again, it is the labor force, in this case teachers, who are sacrificed. Their idiotic argument is that a student can finish college in 3.5 years by reducing the electives. If that’s the case, just remove your two years of useless senior high school.
Business people claim that SHS grads are not employment-ready. But of course, private schools won’t do it because they have already invested big in buildings. So, it will be easier for schools to remove people instead to save on costs, all under the guise of advancing academic progress in this country when it’s all about money all along. You don’t have to be sarcastic: Quality education at its best indeed!
The proposal to remove ethics in college is bereft of merit and is ignorant as to the value and purpose of the teaching of the course, which is rooted in the formative and critical function of education. The proposal to transfer it to Senior High School deprives college students of the teaching of ethics as a professional course, which is crucial in their civic engagements and the pursuit of a democratic society which can only be grounded in responsible citizenship and critical thinking.
The direction of Edcom 2 (the Congressional Commission on Education) and its advisers from the panel of experts from the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) reduces our whole education system into a mode of creating docile workers who will constitute the labor force that will serve the whims and interests of a capital intensive and consumer driven globalized neoliberal economic order. It only breeds our subservience to a colonial past that has denied our people their basic sense of dignity and authentic freedom. Education is meant to make us better humans, not tools in a material world controlled by the rich and powerful.
Ethics requires maturity. Without ethics, no country can survive. How else can people make right judgments when they become professionals? Our Senior High School students are not predisposed into learning the ethical theories and their application. The technical panel only sees ethics from the vantage point of a Manila based academic but ignores the context and content of the course which is framed based on the experiences of our communities, taking into consideration our deep-rooted attachments to local history, culture, and religion. The technical panel reduces the meaning of the good life into something mechanical and economic.
Indeed, this act of Edcom is discriminatory since no Mindanao based ethics teacher or philosophical association has been consulted on the matter. It relies on the advice of some ‘elite’ academics or so-called experts who do not have an idea as to the actual relevance of the teaching of ethics in college across a broad spectrum. Such an actuation on their part is simply demeaning and disregards the contribution of the esteemed ethics scholars in the country who have helped shape its moral and philosophical traditions.
The whole process is absurd and is in danger of risking the future of this country based on the biased opinions of a few individuals whose experiences are nothing compared to the issues and realities that ethics teachers in Mindanao have dealt with. The teaching of ethics is not a burden. It actually enhances what we offer to our students in terms of how they are supposed to value their human freedom and that they must not be dictated by the delusions of a select few who wrongly believe that they exclusively know and can decide what is good for this country.
They don’t have a solid argument. They love to tinker with the system from the administrators’ perspective. That is why I am questioning the scholarly credibility of these people because they don’t have H-indices. That is where the problem starts. They succeeded in removing philosophy in college and now, they are removing Ethics. What a move! Classic capitalist doctrine of making people ignorant and docile so that they won’t complain if exploited. No critical thinking, no democracy!
