EDITORIAL - If K to 12 is ok, why need a survey to say so?

The Department of Education has come out with the results of a Social Weather Stations survey that reportedly indicated more and more people have been convinced about the merits of the K to 12 program that it has rammed down the throats of Filipinos.

According to the survey (reports did not indicate who commissioned the exercise but it would surprise no one if it comes out that the DepEd itself did the commissioning), a whooping 72 percent of Filipinos have embraced K to 12.

Either the survey is a big lie (because most people you ask, rich or poor, young or old, hate the K to 12 to their guts) or a big letdown — why only 72 percent, considering that people have no choice but to accept it? It was forced down their throats and is now in force, remember?

But the biggest question about the survey is why undertake it in the first place? If the DepEd, against overwhelming opposition by the Filipino people, decided to go ahead and implement it come what may, why bother with what people think after the fact, now that the deed is done?

Is this a case of feeling guilty? Does the DepEd, clueless about what it has done, need to reassure itself? If that is the case, how can a self-serving, and probably self-commissioned survey, work to reassure the DepEd?

The DepEd is using the survey the way a cheating husband would bring flowers to his poor unsuspecting wife, the only difference being that, in this case, the unsuspecting wife — the Filipino people — is not really in the dark but is fully aware of the infidelity.

The K to 12 program probably would have worked had the DepEd not rushed it but waited for the circumstances to be just right. But the dreamer who heads the department, and the equally clueless leader he takes orders from, need to show some movement, even if only to blink.

Instead of commissioning expensive surveys that nobody believes in, the money DepEd uses to reassure itself would have been better spent on programs to close the yawning gap between the lofty and presently impossible goals of K to 12 and the stark and cruel reality on the ground.