Imperial on curriculum

Napoleon B. Imperial, Chief Economic Development Specialist of NEDA, has been involved in education for the longest time. He has seen DepEd programs and secretaries come and go. Like all other educational reformists, he has been extremely disappointed at the continuing failure of our system to provide quality education for all Filipinos.

He has been sending me papers on education, also for the longest time. I shall discuss only three of his many insights that directly concern the curriculum.

First, Imperial reminds Secretary Armin Luistro that the “top priority” of DepEd should be the implementation of the Basic Education Sector Reform Agenda (BESRA). Luistro, he says, should be very careful in “designating a new top subordinate (preferably Undersecretary for Programs) who will oversee, harmonize, and accelerate the entire BESRA policy formulation and plan execution.”

Since I was once Usec for Programs and Projects, forgive me if I say that the position takes care of all the things that really matter (curriculum, textbooks, teacher training, accreditation of schools and non-government education seminars, foreign Filipino schools, language of instruction, Adopt-A-School and other private sector grant programs, implementation of foreign loans and grants, health programs, parent-teacher-community organizations, and so on). Needless to say, I do not belittle the heavy burden of other Usecs and the Secretary himself of constructing classrooms, purchasing desks and computers, appointing and paying teachers and officials, ensuring proper use of the budget, and representing the department in the Cabinet and in meetings abroad, but taking care of the “software” is just as difficult (I would say even more difficult) than taking care of the “hardware.”

In short, I agree with Imperial: the choice of the new Usec for Programs and Projects is crucial. I also agree with his second point, which is to integrate basic education schools.

One of the causes of our problems with the curriculum is the separation of the Bureau of Elementary Education (BEE) from the Bureau of Secondary Education (BSE).

Imperial advocates abolishing the two bureaus and establishing instead Directorates for Learning Contents and Strategies, Quality Assurance and Student Services, and School Governance and Community Affairs. (He suggests renaming the Bureau of Alternative Learning System as a Directorate for Alternative Learning System.) The first three Directorates will supervise both elementary and secondary levels.

We can see why removing the bureaucratic barriers between BEE and BSE will make it easier to implement President Aquino’s policy of adding two years to basic education. If we renamed everything as Grades and stopped using the term “Year,” we would have, right now, Grades 1 to 10. We would not be distracted by the issue of which bureau should handle which of the additional grades, because all the grades would be handled by the Directorates. The current disconnect between what BEE thinks should be the learning outcomes of Grade 6 and the competencies that BSE expects of incoming First Year High School students will finally be solved. (By the way, what basic education now produces and what higher education expects basic education to produce are even more drastically different!)

Imperial’s third recommendation is for Congress to enact a law “preserving Mother Tongue-based Multilingual Education (MLE).” I disagree that such a law is necessary nor even desirable.

Brother Andrew Gonzalez, himself a Christian Brother and an Education Secretary like Brother Armin Luistro, always insisted that “we cannot legislate language.” Since he was one of our world-renowned linguists, he knew what he was talking about. Congress should worry about things other than the curriculum.

DepEd has already wisely instituted MLE, though the policy has been diluted somewhat by the insistence of some misguided sectors to retain the Bilingual Education Program (BEP) after Grade 3. We either drop BEP or we don’t. There is no middle ground. Either we put our money where our mouth is (by immediately funding the production of instructional materials in various vernaculars and training teachers to intellectualize these vernaculars) or we forget about the whole thing. Paying lip service to MLE or restricting it to a “scaffold language” after Grade 3 will not work.

I agree with Brother Andrew that the language of instruction will take care of itself. A student used to learning everything in a mother tongue will expect to learn everything else in that language. The customers of DepEd are the students, and just like in industry, the customers are always right. Students will demand, after three grades, to be taught in the language they have been using for three whole years, instead of coping with a new, foreign language of instruction. Teachers and education officials will have no choice but to supply that demand.

DepEd’s MLE policy merely recognizes what is happening on the ground anyway.

Visit any public school classroom. Listen to the language being used by the teacher. More likely than not, that language is a combination of the local language, Filipino, and English. Teachers know when students are not learning. Although they experience guilt for mangling the three languages and for violating DepEd rules, they put their students first. They focus on the end or purpose of teaching, not the means to that end.

Just like language itself, the language of instruction is a matter of usage, not rules nor laws.