The Department of Education’s foolhardy and ill-advised program called K+12 is set to be implemented beginning this schoolyear with the “K” part of the program. That is, kindergarten classes will be established in most, if not all, of the country’s 38,000 public elementary schools. I have no objections to this part of the program. In fact, I am all for compulsory kindergarten in all schools, public or private.
What I object to is the headlong rush of the education department to add two more years to high school, making the original four years of high school as junior high, and the additional two years as senior high. This kind of program only works if supported by an educational system that is good, adequate and responsive to the needs of the times, as well meets the global standards after which it is supposedly patterned or seeks to emulate.
But the Philippine education system is hopelessly behind even most of its neighbors in Asia. Without adequately-trained, well-suited, and superbly capable teachers to make the additional two years work according to the desired effect, coupled with facilities that can make teaching effective, the whole effort will be for naught.
Intentions alone do not make for quality education, and if education secretary Armin Luistro, who is a man of the cloth by profession, thinks education needs a spiritual resolution, he is terribly wrong. God may reward Luistro for his vision. But he will be judged according to his footprints on the ground. The problem is, he cannot even recognize what a footprint is if he saw one.
I dare say Luistro is dreaming. Worse, it is a pipedream he is dreaming, and he imposes it on everyone else without regard for the consequences. He wants to leave his mark on history, and never mind if it has disastrous effects. After all, he believes it is only God who must judge him, not history or mankind. He thinks he owes it to Noynoy to create something out of such a growing nothingness.
Proof that Luistro is dreaming is his constant chirping about the supposedly positive response his program is getting from the various consultations the DepEd has been conducting throughout the country. How naive and gullible this Luistro is. He thinks the crowds his DepEd personnel whip up for his visits are the real thing, not knowing they are just assembled for the benefit of his ego.
Why, the innocent Luistro even brags that there are certain regions in the country where the crowds registered a 100 percent approval of his program. What a dingbat this guy is. If Luistro cannot even see through the fake crowds, how can we expect something to emerge from the pipedream he insists on foisting upon a nation helpless against his despotic imposition.
Luistro even included our region, Central Visayas, as among the places where the crowds at his fake consultations were unanimously behind his plan. As we Visayans are wont to say — “Wa ka kyafi? Unanimous gud tawon. Kinsa kaha tong gipanghakot sa imong mga chuwariwap. Luistro does not have his feet on the ground. He is far removed from reality.
The reality is that the existing educational system and the economic situation in the country are not compatible with the Luistro K+12 proposal at this time and can only be a complete waste of time, money and resources. We cannot embark on programs as serious as this on the mere whimsy that other countries are doing it. If that is the formula of Luistro, we are in for a disaster with far ranging consequences than a tsunami.
Actually the program is good. I have no objections against it per se. But the timing is way off. Now is not the time. The Philippines is not yet ready for such an ambitious proposal. If Luistro want to see his proposal through, he needs to lay the groundwork first. He needs to prepare the foundation. Just like building a road, he needs to make sure the ground is solid and stable enough before he pours in the first batch of concrete.
The DepEd needs to first embark on a massive recruitment and retraining of teachers to make them highly qualified and efficient for the needs required by the vision that inspired the K+12 program in the first place. The problem with Luistro is that he is selling an idea based on what he perceives to be the result without taking into account the means to achieve it.
The government must also ensure that more schoolchildren see their schooling through in order to reap the benefits of the program. For of what use is more years of high school if families cannot even keep their children for even just two or three years of grade school. It is not the number of years that is required but a respectable overhaul of the educational system.