Faith in Philippine education

Title

Creator

Pope, Jean

Language

English

Source

Volume XV (Issue No.7) July 1963

Year

1963

Subject

Philippine education

School crisis management

School administration

Philippines. Department of Education

Roces, Alejandro R.

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Abstract

Everybody talks of a ‘school crisis,’ But everybody wants to go to school.

Fulltext

■ Everybody talks of a ‘school crisis,’ But everybody wants to go tp school. FAITH IN PHILIPPINE EDUCATION Jean Pope “School crisis? There is no school crisis,” proclaims Ale jandro R. Roces, leaning back in his chair with the confidence of a man who has quietly averted one. Which indeed he has. One year and six months after assuming office as Sec retary of Education, Roces has packed an-impressive list of a cbievement into his job of achievement into his job, notably resolving what all newspapers an.d. school offi cials lovingly refer to as “pe rennial school crisis.” “Let me tell you what this school crisis is supposed to be about,” Races says, bring ing his swivel chair sharply back to. his upright position. (Visitors to Roces’ Filipiniana-decked office in the De partment of Education in Arroceros will be clearly in trigued by the contrivances of one swivel chair: it is the barometer to its occupant’s moods.) “Evrey year, without fail, you read about the school crisis. So many students will be left out of school, the headlines announce. That’s usually in April or May. Then suddenly, by the mid dle of July you notice from the silence of usually noisy quarters that the critical period has been passed. You wonder why. Well, I’ll tell you. That’s because the crisis is nothing more than an artificial one. “In July the funds ear marked for education have al ready been released by the appropriation committee. The National Budget has averted a crisis which never existed. It’s as simple as that. “And speaking of the bud get, do you know it has been an instrument for silencing critics of my new school plan?” He smiles sweetly, contendedly. July 19 "You know all the argu ments I advanced for chang ing the opening of classes from June to September? Well, everybody still griped about that. I said the child ren would get wet and cont a c t respiratory ailments, plodding on to school in the rainy months. I said think about the rural youth who should be helping their pa rents with planting. They said, but June July and Aug ust are hardly months for vacation. Everyone’s vaca tion will be spoiled. “Well" says the man almost everybody calls Anding. “I told them, I’m sorry. I’m not a secretary of vacation. I’m the secretary of education and I should concern myself primarily with education, not the period of vacation. "And then I told them, you have to consider the budget.” (Although many readers will not remember seeing anything about this in the arguments of the Secretary for the pass age and popularity of his school calendar change, one must speculate that this must have been an ace up his sleeve. Or else a master stroke of good luck. Either way, the indefatigable edu cator stands to lose nothing.) "Suppose, I said, they do not approve the budget on time? How can we open classes in June? They said no, that won’t happen. Well, it did. Now, how could we have opened classes in June if the school calendar had remain ed the same? There would have been a ‘crisis.’ ” The man behind the job Secretary Roces is a fast talking, fast-moving, quick witted individual who does not confine the activities of his job to his desk. He looks as comfortable retracing the Antipolo trail on foot or tramping into the mud of a Palawan cave, as he does signing directives. He has been described by one who works with him as an out spoken, outgoing whirlwind. Certainly he does not mince words when he feels very strongly against something.. Like all New Era men (either you like them or you dislike them, but you can’t help but admire their dyna mism) "Anding” Roces pro jects an image of speeed, spunk and spontaniety. He 20 Panorama gets things done. And prob ably no other secretary of education in the past has cleared the cobwebs from his office as fast as Roces has, and consequently antagoniz ed so many in the process as well. Roces and thorns For Roces has as many cri tics as he has change-imple menting directives. There are the old guard educators who wince at shafts that top ple their swivels, teachers, superintendents and princi pals disgruntled at raps against their inefficiency, and politicians who, long accus tomed to sticking their fin gers intd the education pie, draw thejn out in burning haste at lashes from the wellknown Roces pen and tongue. Roces, the man of action, has crammed many achieve ments into the space of a year and a half. He has done something about the shortage of text books in public schools, or dering the printing and dis tribution of 8,307,972 text books to elementary and se condary grades. He has ordered private (particularly medical schools) to cut down on the size of their classes or else. With schools having grudgingly complied, both teacher, and student are now assured of more study advantages. He has issued directives curbing the bad habits of teachers, officials and stud ents. To teachers: no mah jong, no improper dressing. He has told officials to stop allowing their wives to sell cloth, jewelry and other items to their poor, highpressured teachers. Students, on the other hand, have been sternly warned against the consequences of cheating. Last year he opened 13,000 extension classes to accomo date an expanding school population, directed the hold ing of teachers’ institutes in stead of socials-clogged work shops, cracked down on the requisitioning of school sup plies, and in general, gave the department organization a good face-saving face-lift ing. “Instant schoolhouses” He also outlined a plan (soon to be carried out) on “instant schoolhouses.” July 21 This involves the product ion of a certain kind of hol lowblock materials from a semi-portable machine, which can be carried to barrios and usd to construct a school house, strong and serviceable, within a short time. "I got this idea from President Ma teos of Mexico,” Roces says. “And I’m happy for this, because it will save many students from the embarrasment, years later, of having to point to a mango tree in some dilapidated schoolhouse and saying: ‘That is' my alma mater.’ ” Many left to tackle On the whole, his adminis tration has been a fruitful one. And he is optimistic about it. This despite all the pro blems. A three-year old NEC-AID survey on the state of Phil ippine education came up with a lot of discouraging, and to some extent, alarm ing, facts: School programs are not related to the needs of the community. There is no ade quate support from Congress of the public school system. Classes are overcrowded, text books obsolete, laboratory equipment limited. At nor mal level teachers with dip lomas cannot pass the exams for teachers. Buildings are poor. The situation of agri cultural schools is disheart ening, in view of the fact that the Philippines is an agricultural country. In brief, these were the findings of the team. And Roces admits that many of these conditions are still pre sent today. “I; is true that many times school programs are not re lated to the needs of the com munity. As a corollary of this, you can add that a large number of youth enter adult life without vocational com petence.” To some extent this is a case of politics. Going to a Philippine map tacked onto his wall and encircling the province of Camarines Sur, Roces con tinues excitedly. “Take this province. Where would you say its ma jor income comes from? The government pours two mil lion pesos annually into this place for the elementary edu cation of its students. (The 22 Panorama provincial government pays high school teachers.) “By the same token, you take the case of Marinduque. There is a trade school there. Well and good. Some con gressman proposed a. bill creating not a high school, mind you, but a vocational school (which will draw funds from the national gov ernment). This is still fine, many will be employeci. But do you know what this school teachers? Auto me chanics. This is a town which has about five or six cars. “This is what happens when school^ are opened not for education but for employ ment.” Thirty three centavos out of every peso “As for Congress support, education receives no less than 33% of the national budget every year. The fi gures should speak for them selves.” As for agricultural schools, the Secretary says that the ones we have are outstand ing. Perhaps it is just that we do not have enough. “Inferior teachers? It is not true that we do not-screen them properly. But how thorough can you get when the teacher shortage is always -keen? (For the schoolyear ’61-’63, there were close to'half a million public elementary school-children under the care of not more than 120,788 teachers. The figures for secondary public schools were no better: 10,900 teachers for 232,168 students. “This year alone, we need 15,000 new teachers.” How ever, a comprehensive teacher training program introduced by the Secretary promises to remedy the situation. As for the textbook short age, Roces is working to achieve the.ideal ratio of one textbook to every student. The present figure (one textbook for every three stu dents' is not too bad com pared to the 1:20 ration of several years ago. Is our education sub-stand ard? The conclusion of the NEC-AID survey was drama tically disconcerting: the state of Philippine education is deplorable. Says Anding Roces empha tically in answer to the asserJuly 23 lion, "We are a nation of self flagellants. “We constantly hear of criticisms levelled against our system, mostly from our own leaders. Before the war, many heads of families tell their offspring, our schools were better. We received better education. "This before-the-wac men tality is unfair. Before the war, the most beautiful home to me and to many people was this old structure right across from where I lived in Remedios. But today this would be just an ordinary residence. “We must not gQ into un fair comparisons. We are an underdeveloped country: compare our education then to countries like ours. If there is ?iny competition, we must be allowed to compete equally.” Morals and morons "But these educators — the people who decry the poor quality of our students the loudest — are the most to blame. Many students are morons, they say. To which I agree. I remember a stu dent I had when I was dean of FEU’s Art and Sciences. He came to me asking for an excuse from classes because "I have to have two tooth pulled,” he said. ‘Whatl I said. ‘Oh, excuse me, Sir, I meant two tooths pulled.’ "Of course we have these students. But the point is, why do we have to accept them? "If the Philippines has in fact an inferior quality of education, it is* because we do not have such a thing as selective higher education. We are just about the only country in the world which does not screen its college students before admission. "A high school graduate with an IQ of 12 can enter college, provided he can af ford the tuition. “We even have such uni versities which go to the ex tent of boasting about their enrollment figures — why, a university should be ashamed of a mammoth population, not proud of it. It should be a center of education, not population,. "Yes, many of our educat ors, and many of our private schools are to blame. “Here, an educator is no more than a man or a wo man who has invested money 24 Panorama in education. And it is un fortunate that private shcools (the profit, as differentiated from the non-profit one) have attracted a bad type of businessman, x one interested in money more than in edu cation. -“What is more, the pecu liarly Filipino custom of close family ties has bred an evil: that of the. family-type school. "Many colleges, as you know, are pwned by families. Started out by men with sin cere and meritorious motives, they are'eventually passed on to the children. Some of them, fortunately, are good educators, but this is the ex ception rather than the rule. Faith in education But Roces has a lot of faijji in the future of edu cation in this country. “You know why? Because of our people. I think this is the only country in the world where parents sell everything they have just to send their children to school. Not all people have that much interest in learning. Put up a school in some re mote town in Africa. Do you think many will go? No, but here, even rural schools are crowded. "Education will work. We have good students, and we have good teachers. Do you know that the British educat or James Dunnill who visit ed us in 1954 said the Fili pino teacher is the most de voted class of individual in the world? I am inclined to agree with him. “We underestimate our selves. He are all prophets of doom, as I recall myself and members of my tribe to be when I was still writing a newspaper column.. "But have you heard of that line circulating in Broadway about the future of the stage? ‘The theater,’ they say, ‘is dying, but, tickets are harder to get.. That’s the same thing we have here. .The education system is being lambasted, but everyone wants to go to school. “Filipinos have faith in education. With that as ba sis, there is no reason why we should fail.” — The Sun day Times Magazine. July 25

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