Sun.Star Davao

The problem festers

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DON’T be fooled. Just because the classes have started and children are now going to school does not mean the problem of public education has been solved.

Think: one teacher to 50 kindergart­en pupils.

Good luck to the teacher. Even mothers will agree that given such a mob, she will be pinching, shouting, or threatenin­g at least one. No one lower than a saint can ever handle 50 kindergart­en pupils stuffed into one tiny classroom, not even moms. In the three to four hours that these children are stuffed into these classrooms, someone’s going to break out and somebody’s going to break down and patience will really be stretched up to the most unimaginab­le limits.

Getting through another school opening is not the be-all end-all of public education. But this is how the problems have been treated. It appears that for the Department of Education (Deped), for as long as the classes are opened on schedule and the children are all stuffed into classrooms, then everything is well.

No. All is not well.

That is the very reason why every school opening, the same problems stare at the children’s and parents’ amid denials by education officials that such problems still exist.

Once and for all, we wish to hear from the Deped the full extent of the problem, as well as the admission that there is no way 50 kindergart­en children will ever learn anything no matter what manner of teaching by one single teacher can ever think of.

The way it is going, kindergart­en in Kinder to 12 Basic Education Program has been establishe­d to comply with the law and nothing else. The prevailing thought being, these kids will be in first grade next year, let’s just focus on the first grade.

But, for as long as the education system denies that this is the prevailing thought, whether conscious or unconsciou­s, then kindergart­en will just be another ingredient in the complex problem public education has become. The bad thing about this is that, the one year these children have to endure in such conditions may just make a good number of them lose interest on education. That is starting them very early into becoming dropouts. God forbid.

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