EDUCATION secretary Leonor Briones announced that the K to 12 curriculum will undergo review to “keep up with the changing times.”
It would do well for the Department of Education (DepEd) to address the concerns of those against the program. The Alliance of Concerned Teachers, for example, has called on the department and Congress to do an honest evaluation of the K to 12 program and even abandon it altogether than be maintained or reformed.
In the view of the alliance, K to 12 has “worsened” the problems of our education system. DepEd should address head-on the observation that the program’s impetuous implementation has aggravated the shortages in facilities, personnel and materials.
Republic Act 10533, which was passed in 2013, made mandatory the one year in kindergarten and two years in senior high school purportedly to address the poor quality of basic education and high unemployment rate.
But five years into the law’s enactment, we still hear observations that the program has become a burden to teachers, students and parents, and is plagued with a lot of problems. Surely, these complaints did not just come from nowhere. The teachers’ alliance claims textbooks for elementary and junior high school are not yet completed, instructional materials for senior high school teachers are not yet available, public senior high schools are very scant, billions of pesos are paid by the government to private schools, and the dropout rate is alarming.
And so we ask, “For what?” Have there been remarkable improvements in the achievement test results of K to 12 students or in the country’s unemployment rate?
Early this year, the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry said the first batch of K to 12 graduates were not ready for skilled jobs and are therefore not employable. Now that says a lot – either about the attitude of employers toward the program, or the quality of the K to 12 and its students.
Education must be geared towards national development. Its duty is to optimize the potentials of our youth and instil among them a deep desire to serve the country. They should be equipped with critical thinking, necessary skills and sense of nationalism to enable them to analyze and help solve the underdevelopment of our country.
It is not enough that they are taught how to “adapt to the fast changing world.” They should be made to realize that they can be catalysts of change and that they must use their skills and talents in effecting the kind of change that the Filipino people aspire – to be freed from poverty, underdevelopment, corruption in government, and dependence to foreign powers.
