School opening blues
JUST seeing the first day of school on television news and I feel for the teachers and students involved. There are 22 million students who are enrolled in the grade and high school levels. Sixteen million in public schools and presumably 6 million in private schools. On numbers alone, there is a problem of organization and availability of facilities and those who will man them.
Earlier, we saw scenes of teachers and parents doing the Brigada Eskwela, which is the cleaning and preparation of classrooms for the opening of classes. Volunteers are needed, as the task of putting the classrooms in order is beyond the personnel in the Department of Education (DepEd). They are not enough. There is just too much to be done with insufficient equipment, supplies and manpower to get schools ready for the beginning of the school year. Teachers and parents bear the brunt of it. An added task this year was the directive to remove everything on the walls, be they portraits of heroes, periodic tables, proverbs, lists. With reading comprehension at a nadir as admitted, removing something to read in classrooms is a waste of opportunity and energy.
Furthermore, there is a classroom shortage, all of 159,000, which makes for the existing classrooms to be packed with 50 to 60 students. Considering that last year, there was an admitted lack of 40,000 classrooms, this new figure of 159,000 this year makes one wonder if the problem has been addressed at all. Or if there is a plan to add more classrooms incrementally until the right number is reached. It seems year after year, it is the same story, a lack of classrooms. And in bigger numbers as though nothing was done to make them available. Then think of the teachers in this situation. They will start from scratch in packed classrooms for reading, for arithmetic, for language. It is a tall order with all the added tasks like administrative chores they are given because there is too a lack of teachers.
Listening to the head of the teachers’ union was an immersion in their problems. They have hardly had a vacation. The new curriculum had been foisted on them during their vacation, which meant teachers had to work, instead of resting. Moreover, according to the union head, while they were asked to give comments or answers or feedback regarding the new curriculum, they did, but their answers were not reflected in the end result.
Meanwhile, it has to be admitted that despite the DepEd having the biggest budget and a large body of employees from teachers to bureaucrats, it cannot cope with the number of students that need to go to school. Here, private schools play a role in accommodating students to take some pressure off the public schools. Yet there is a bill threatening to become law that would curtail private schools’ financial arrangements with their students. Like public schools, private schools need adequate budgets. They do not get anything from taxpayers’ money except for tax breaks, which are not enough. There is a crisis of private schools closing down since the pandemic for lack of resources to do online or hybrid teaching. Students have been dropping out. Yet the threat of a bill that forbids “no exam, no test,” a traditional way of keeping their finances viable, would oblige private schools to give credit when repayment is unsure. When credit is offered in this way, it will be taken, even if not needed. We are not a nation of conscientious debt payers by a long shot. And this bill is like the sword of Damocles hanging over private schools.
One would have thought that there would be an informed and practical answer to the problem of how to keep private schools operating and help out the huge number of students that public schools cannot completely accom
modate. But our tunnel-visioned lawmakers, for whom their election chances are their ever present aim, actually continue to sabotage educational alternatives when they are so needed. Populist attitudes that make no sense are fostered into laws to the detriment of others.
Furthermore, there seems to be little said about feeding schoolchildren of marginalized families at least one meal a day. What is the situation regarding malnutrition as seen in our schoolchildren? One teacher from a mountain town requested any type of food for his pupils saying, “not one pandesal reaches them, even by mistake.” This is gross neglect of our young people who are in serious need of better nutrition. And yet there is talk about initiatives addressing these feeding problems that are not implemented.
Under the present circumstances in our education system, it may be useful to hear our teachers who are in the frontlines and are bearing too much of the burden. Their experience and their vocation may come up with good suggestions for managing our schools.
For one, more teachers should be hired. Let them just teach unless they are principals and superintendents who must administer. If clerical tasks need to be done, hire teachers’ aides. In other words, spend what is essential and get the funding to do so as education is a critical part of society’s welfare and future. We are not focusing enough and funding education enough when we should, as a priority and as insurance for a progressive future.
Frankly, seeing what is going on in the education of our young, a vital nation-building task with its many problems unaddressed, makes for a dismal school opening for both teachers, students, parents and the public.