EDITORIAL - Revert to the old school calendar

Following incidents where children were reported not being able to concentrate during classes even collapsing due to the intense summer heat, there are now proposals to reset the start the school calendar to June again so that our pupils don’t have to be in school during the hottest months of the year.

In case people forgot, for the longest time the Philippine followed the June to March academic year calendar. But this was changed to start in August some years back to “follow international standards.”

We agree with reverting to the old school calendar. For us, the school calendar should actually never have been moved in the first place. It suited our specific situation.

There has always been this misconception that if we adhere to what foreign schools are doing that our school system would magically improve. We did that in the number of years our children spend in high school. Guess what? Those two additional years in high school aren’t proving their worth.

We did that with the adjusting the months our children spend in school. Guess what? Now our children are struggling to pay attention to the lesson as the classroom heats up around them.

Holding classes under the mango tree is not an option, installing air-conditioning units in all classrooms in the country will be impossible because of the power costs and the logistics of supplying these to every school. Redesigning classrooms to have bigger windows is out of the question. The best option against the heat is to avoid the months it’s at its peak.

Because the climate plays a huge part in our daily lives, more so now with climate change and extreme weather, our school calendar should be adhered to what is happening on the ground, not on what other nations are doing.

While it is true that the old calendar placed some students in harm’s way during what is considered the typhoon and monsoon months, rains and typhoons happen only occasionally, meanwhile this sweltering heat never seems to relent during the daylight hours.

Between what can be literally called a hell or high water situation, if given the choice, we also think Filipinos are more prepared for and would rather deal with intermittent rains and floods, compared to the constant sweltering heat.