Removing minor subjects
THE removal of minor or GE (general education) subjects from college is an old issue that Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Secretary Alfredo Pascual has revived days ago.Pascualwasquotedtohavesaidthat“...[t]hereshould be no more general education courses in college. General education courses will be taken care of in the K-12 curriculum. College should focus on the major subjects.”
For clarity, GE courses include among others: Filipino, Social Sciences, General Ethics, English, Rizal, Art Appreciation, and Theology (for those studying in a Catholic school).
I am in favor of reducing but not totally removing GE courses in college. I share the sentiment of some students that Rizal, for example, should be taught in high school. The same is true with Filipino and Art Appreciation.
However, I would still prefer to retain some GE courses depending on their relevance to the student’s degree program. If you are a Political Science major, you still need a few courses in Writing, Mathematics and Philosophy. These are preconditions for a Political Science major to have a wellgrounded grasp of his major subjects. After all, Political Science is "not an independent discipline." Its methods are not even its own. For example, it would be too much an expectation for a senior high graduate to fully master Statistics. Similarly, I do not think it would be good for PreMed students not to have any background in Ethics.If I have understood Pascual correctly, he envisions all Filipino senior high graduates to possess sufficient learning competencies before entering the university. But this expectation is unrealistic on several counts and for various reasons. I would like to mention that the Department of Education's (DepEd) “no child shall be left behind policy” literally prevents us from achieving “quality control” in Senior High School.
THE removal of minor or GE (general education) subjects from college is an old issue that Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Secretary Alfredo Pascual has revived days ago. Pascual was quoted to have said that “... [t]here should be no more general education courses in college. General education courses will be taken care of in the K-12 curriculum. College should focus on the major subjects.”
For clarity, GE courses include among others: Filipino, Social Sciences, General Ethics, English, Rizal, Art Appreciation, and Theology (for those studying in a Catholic school).
I am in favor of reducing but not totally removing GE courses in college. I share the sentiment of some students that Rizal, for example, should be taught in high school. The same is true with Filipino and Art Appreciation.
However, I would still prefer to retain some GE courses depending on their relevance to the student’s degree program. If you are a Political Science major, you still need a few courses in Writing, Mathematics and Philosophy. These are preconditions for a Political Science major to have a wellgrounded grasp of his major subjects. After all, Political Science is "not an independent discipline." Its methods are not even its own. For example, it would be too much an expectation for a senior high graduate to fully master Statistics. Similarly, I do not think it would be good for Pre-Med students not to have any background in Ethics.
If I have understood Pascual correctly, he envisions all Filipino senior high graduates to possess sufficient learning competencies before entering the university. But this expectation is unrealistic on several counts and for various reasons. I would like to mention that the Department of Education's (DepEd) “no child shall be left behind policy” literally prevents us from achieving “quality control” in Senior High School.
To some extent, I see the wisdom and the merit of Pascual’s proposal. I hope he won’t be the Don Quixote of Philippine Education.