MORE than the homework issue, Congress should do a comprehensive assessment and review of the K-12 program, including its curriculum to see its many flaws, which are seen to cause further decline in the quality of education.
Homework has become an inevitable part of teachers’ and students’ work due to the unrealistic K-12 curriculum, which groups such as the Alliance of Concerned Teachers say begs to be reviewed thoroughly to address the program’s many problems.
K-12 is an experiment that tries to integrate a little bit of everything in a complicated manner, while leaving no ample time for mastery of subjects and development of critical thinking. Further, the range of topics and competencies set by the K-12 curriculum are impossible to cover within formal class hours, resulting to added and beyond-school hour work for both teachers and students.
K-12 follows an outcome-based education framework where students’ learning is measured by their outputs. This demands that students produce several and varied forms of outputs for the assigned topic of the day, which teachers are required to design and facilitate via their daily lesson logs (DLL).
For example, a DLL should indicate that a certain topic should be covered within, say, an hour. Such should entail a discussion or input part from the teacher and multiple activities to ensure learners are engaged, like reporting, skits, writing, poster-making, and many others.
Research work, which is done outside of class hours, has also been made heavier on both teachers and students under K-12 due to the still severely lacking learning materials despite its seven-year implementation.
Students have more than one class and therefore are required to cover several topics and competencies daily. No amount of “budgeting of work” can force students and teachers alike to accomplish more than what is realistically doable in a set period of time, hence the need to take home their school work. For the teachers’ part, they too are pressured to issue homework to ensure the completion of their DLL, as it is part of their performance evaluation.
It is this context that forces teachers and students alike to render overtime school work. Teachers are not issuing homework to burden students. It is demanded of them by the K-12 program, so much that their performance evaluation system ensures its implementation. It is therefore unfair for the Department of Education to claim that it is “discouraging homework” through several policies, because the agency’s main curriculum is the culprit behind this added work.
The proposed bill which includes a penalty of P50,000 and/or one to two-year jail sentence to teachers who will require homework from students is ridiculous. It passes on the blame to teachers who are as much a victim to the faults of K-12 as students.
