Cooperation needed to prevent ‘lost year’ for PH students Ed i tor ia
AFTER some days of public confusion, the Department of Education (DepEd) on Thursday finally clarified that there would be no physical classes for elementary and secondary students for this coming school year, now set to begin on August 24.
Following a statement by President Rodrigo Duterte last week that he was not in favor of students physically attending school pending the availability of a vaccine against the novel coronavirus, both the DepEd and Health Secretary Francisco Duque 3rd initially said physical classes might be possible in some coronavirus-free areas, leading to confusion among the public.
In a briefing on Thursday, however, Education Secretary Leonor Briones stressed that there was no divergence between the department’s policy and the President’s point of view.
“I would like to emphasize [ that] there is no conflict. There is no disagreement. There is no debate between the pronouncement of the President and of the department because they are exactly the same,” she said. “We will not allow children to be too close to one another.”
Now that it has been clarified that there will definitely be no physical classes for the coming school year, the challenge for the DepEd, teachers, parents and students will be to find a way for effective learning to take place through alternative means. It is not a task that families can simply leave to the government, but one that requires the active cooperation of all concerned.
Briones has said the Education department is working on creating “blended learning” programs, which will be a combination of online lessons and instruction, lessons delivered by TV and radio for students who do not have internet access and printed learning modules and activities that can be distributed to students’ homes. Those are obvious solutions, but what is just as alarmingly obvious is that both the DepEd and its teachers and the families and students it serves are woefully unprepared to make a rapid shift from the traditional school setting and orientation of education in a little less than three months’ time.
Whether or not anyone should have been prepared is a debate of little value. As has often been said, hindsight has 20/ 20 vision; as little as three or four months ago, virtually no one could have anticipated the circumstances we are all now faced with. What is important now is a collective effort to make the most of decidedly less than ideal conditions for learning to prevent the country’s millions of students from falling behind.
Apart from developing the instructional materials and methods as quickly as possible and tapping any expertise necessary to help that effort, the main job of the Education department will be to apply the effort flexibly. Individual schools, teaching staff and student populations have different capabilities to work with distance learning tools and methods. Those that may be ready earlier than the announced August 24 start of the school year should be allowed to proceed sooner; for instance, we have heard of a number of private schools that, thanks to having better resources than their public counterparts, are prepared to roll out online education programs as early as this coming week. By the same token, schools and students that need more time and support to be ready for nontraditional schooling should be given that even if it means beginning their academic year a bit later than August 24.
For parents and guardians of students, the new education format will require a great deal more personal engagement than many are accustomed to. Face- to- face interaction between teachers and students is a critical part of the learning process, but under the “new normal” that will be strictly limited if not altogether impossible. That being the case, the people at home have to play that “personal interface” role for students. In a sense, everyone with school- age children will be going back to school this year. None of this will be easy for anyone involved, but if everyone works together, it can still be successful. And that success will mean that even though the coronavirus may have caused us great harm in the present, we will have at least prevented it from damaging our future.