Education amidst Covid-19 Crisis

Kenneth C. Danan

Many students in both private and public schools had enrolled online for school year 20202021. DepEd was aware of the technological, financial, and other differences among the millions of Filipino families with school-age children; Secretary Briones expected many of them to forego their enrollment during the COVID-19 public health emergency. Some 5 million children will most probably not enroll precisely because of those issues.

We all both know that many families “are not prepared financially [and] technologically” for online learning. Some can’t afford the computers or even smart phones needed, or to subscribe to Wi-Fi providers and master the use of the technology involved within a short two months. As some news reports have noted, some teachers are similarly unprepared, either because they don’t have the devices needed and can’t afford them, and/or are also as technologically challenged as their students.

There is also the problem of connectivity. Despite the Department of Information and Communication Technology’s (DICT) pledge to make Wi-Fi available throughout the country, the connections are still either too weak or nonexistent not only in those remote localities from where students have had to walk for kilometers and cross rivers to the nearest school during pre-pandemic times, but even in some urban areas.

The economic and class divide of Philippine society has long been a fundamental issue in Philippine education. Students from rich families based in the cities and some highly urbanized municipalities have more access to usually private and expensive schools, while those from poor families are plagued by a lack of classrooms and teachers, and almost inaccessible public schools with limited resources that teachers themselves are

Despite the digital age, many public schools still lack not only computers but even books, desks and blackboards. There is also a shortfall in the supply of public school teachers, due in part to their being among the lowest-paid among government employees despite their qualifications and many responsibilities.

It need hardly be said that the dismal showing of Filipino students in reading comprehension, mathematics, and science has to be addressed. The ignorance and contempt for learning evident in many sectors of the population are in conflict with the imperatives of national development and the democratization of Philippine society and politics. Citizens who know little or nothing, or are misinformed about the most pressing issues, cannot intelligently make the decisions on which democratic, honest and effective governance depends.

The sorry state of education helps explain the fragility of what passes for democracy in the Philippines. It is of course possible, although never explicitly stated, that keeping much of the population ignorant best serves the interests of the political oligarchy that rules the country. A dumb constituency is after all the surest guarantee of keeping ineffectual and corrupt governments in power.

This is the already troubled and troubling context in which the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the entire educational system to shift from traditional face-to-face classroom learning to online, “blended,” and “flexible” methods.

To the longstanding problems of Philippine education have thus been added the difficulties posed by the shift to online teaching. These difficulties boil down to the possibility that the schools may not effectively impart the literacy and numeracy skills required at the basic level, and, at the collegiate level, the respect for and commitment to knowledge and the critical outlook that authentic tertiary education is supposed to impart to the citizens of a democracy. As things now stand, the crisis of Philippine education is likely to reach its most acute stage in these extraordinary times because of the public health crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, as a less than capable system flounders in the sea of troubles unleashed by the necessary shift to remote learning.

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The author is Teacher I at Calangain ES

Lubao West District