EDITORIAL - Set the example

Questionable discounts, out-of-town trips and even junkets overseas in exchange for the purchase of a product. Such perks are dangled not only to public school administrators but also to private educators, according to the head of the National Book Development Board. Dennis Gonzalez, who chairs the NBDB, urged Catholic schools last Thursday to help stamp out corruption in the purchase of textbooks. He blamed corruption for the continued proliferation of overpriced and substandard textbooks riddled with errors.

Gonzalez, associate dean of the Ateneo School of Government, issued his appeal to Catholic school administrators and officers during one of the sessions at the 2009 national convention of the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines. Marian School academic supervisor Antonio Calipjo-Go has waged a crusade for years against error-filled textbooks in both public and private schools, compelling the Department of Education to ban the use of several of the books and issue additional books bearing the corrections. The textbooks were found to contain both grammatical and factual errors. Go recently denounced the continued use of some of the textbooks in public schools.

Scandals in the procurement of textbooks have been around for years. During the presidency of Joseph Estrada, a woman invoked his name in trying to arm-twist the Department of Education to approve a textbook deal. In later years, controversies focused on the numerous errors in textbooks used in both public and private schools. The problem was compounded by the inability of some teachers to detect the errors.

Gonzalez said Catholic schools should serve as role models in accountability and help put an end to unethical practices in the procurement of textbooks. He said certain Catholic school administrators were willing to overlook errors in textbooks in exchange for junkets and other gifts from publishers.

Education officials have tapped experts to review textbooks for factual accuracy and grammatical correctness. Book publishers themselves must be held accountable for the quality of their products. The task of spotting errors and correcting them is daunting, especially for textbooks in English – a language where even many teachers are lacking in proficiency. School administrators can do their part in preventing what has been described as the mis-education of Filipinos by rejecting corruption and demanding the highest standards from textbook publishers.