‘Why is the sky?’ (Repeat 7 times)

One of every three public schoolers does not have a single textbook. That should be woeful. But with the kind of textbooks the Department of Education hands out, it can be a blessing. After a year of rectifying mistakes in Language, Science and Social Studies textbooks, the DepEd has issued at least eleven new grade school books — all equally full of wrongs. The reign of error was pointed out in full-page newspaper ads last month by Antonio Calipjo Go, academic supervisor of Marian School-Quezon City. Over a hundred were truly glaring, like: “Quails stay together in groups called convey; they sleep in circle.” And, “Early kites were very large leaves; the string was a piece of vine.” And even, “Fort Santiago was the fortress used by Rajah Soliman as his protection against the Spaniards.” Millions of copies of this latest batch, as with those criticized each year by Go starting in 1997, are in the hands of schoolchildren waiting to be miseducated. Voltaire must have foreseen this when he said long ago “the multitude of books is making us ignorant.”

Imagine what innocent minds will turn into with such entries as, “Be in the peak of health,” in an English book. Or, “Fishing means catching all kinds of living animals in the water like oysters and clams,” as a Science learner. Or, “Ang Tawi-Tawi ay nasa dakong hilagang-kanluran (northwest) ng Pilipinas,” for Social Studies.

One wonders what kind of authors the DepEd commissions for its multibillion-peso instructional materials. PhDs they’re supposedly screened by the World Bank no less. And yet, their entries simply don’t make sense. Like, “Makinilya (typewriter) ang unang gamit na iniregalo sa akin ni Daddy noong magtapos ako sa Kinder.” (Really, too young to have a typewriter or too old to finish kindergarten?) Or, “I dipped my tired feet into a basin of water to soothe the ache and fret.” (Huh?) Or, “The lakes widdled down in the hollows of the ground; the hen walked coquetly; when he smells something foul, it makes him squirmish; the potato pursued a disapproving lip.” (Double huh?)

Could the PhDs have done sloppy research? Imagine an English book stating, “Jose Garcia Villa wrote the story ‘Woman with Two Navels’,” when it is Nick Joaquin’s and its true title is “The Woman Who Had Two Navels”. It happens to the best of them. Even William Murray, the governor of Oklahoma in 1932, believed “It’s a scientific fact that if you shave your moustache, you weaken your eyes.”

Could the PhDs have been misled by pseudo-scientists into writing, “Of course, goldfish really drink milk; don’t you see the milky water; isn’t milk good for my fish”? Even the hi-tech Japanese were once deluded by a prominent academic, Iwamochi Shizuma, into believing that they are unique not only culturally but also physically, and that American burger was unsuitable for digestion by the Japanese because their intestines are about a meter longer than those of foreigners.

Or did the PhDs simply believe they can never be wrong. Thus, such entry as: “Mt. Makiling is located along the borders of Laguna and Tayabas. Beetles eat trees. The bat licks itself like a cat; after washing up it flies away. Not all mountains are made by wrinkles in the ground.” Why, even westerners can have wrinkles in their theories. In his 1870 book Sexual Science, Orson Squire Fowler wrote that, “Twins and triplets undoubtedly originate in second and third copulations, immediately following the first, each drawing and then impregnating an egg. The fact that twins are born as soon as possible after each other supports this view.”

But then, there is no excuse for ignorance, much more for spreading it. The authors have stated before the press and DepEd reviewers that they meant no harm. Which only reminds us of Charles Kettering’s warning that “you can be sincere and still be stupid.”

Some of the authors didn’t take kindly to being taken to task by Go. They found him arrogant, unimaginative and insulting, and called him names. Go bore it in silence. He knows it is difficult to defeat ignoramuses in argument. Some sued him for money in a vain effort to prove themselves right. Go found consolation in Mark Twain’s advice that “all you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and success is sure.” To appease Go, the DepEd formed review panels, which found the textbooks accurate and astute, save for a few chapters here and there, contrary to his findings. This only proved right Herbert Spencer’s remark that “a jury is composed of 12 men of average ignorance.”

Go pleads to believers to band together as education reformers and force the DepEd to shape up. He exhorts them to bear mockery as Galileo did when ostracized for saying the earth revolves around the sun. Perhaps there will be valuable lessons in such sacrifice. For Galileo also said, “I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.”

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