Ferdinand F. Fremista, Jr.

Reading and Writing

Grade 11- Rene Descartes Critique Paper

OPINION: K-12 is 6 years of High School for Nothing

A Critical Analysis

Cristina Chi wrote an article entitled “OPINION: K-12 is 6 years of High

School for Nothing” which was all about the failures of K-12 education

system and how the DepEd may improve it. Even if the new education

system is still on the run, it cannot hide its discrepancies. I firmly believe

that there were some anomalies upon its implementation.

Christina Chi's (Name has been changed) credibility as a writer was a bit

questioning to me. Aside from the writer's unknown identity, subjectively

speaking, at first, I questioned if the writer's statements were true. But the

article was published on the CNN's website and took the readers into true-

to-life experiences which cleared all my histeria.

It seemed that one of the main points of the writer upon writing this article

was employability which was a major concern of Department of Education's

lack of evidence on its success after its implementation of the K-12

educational system. She jumped right in to her main point of DepEd's

failures after her introduction. Upon stating the point, she said that as early
as January of this year, the graduates of senior high school or Grade 12,

would not be able to compete in the workforce despite of the DepEd's

promise of "employability" which was the top selling point of K-12

Curriculum. It is also stated that the "poor implementation of senior high

school " contributed to the year-long mess that the students experienced.

She provided the necessary evidences that will support her point and

reached to a conclusion that the two years of tuition fees, insurmountable

effort, and time from the students' part had gone to waste as they had only

ended up in the same inhumane Philippine labor force where labor rights

are routinely violated.

Chi indicated that introducing the new K-12 curiculum will always result to

birthing pain on the second part of the article. She emphasized her point by

stating true life experiences and concluded that senior high school, which

was also tagged as college preparatory as it claimed to give students the

fundamentals of all general education subjects in college, risks being truly

useless if the department will not conduct thorough research on its first

implementation.

In the last part of the article, she stated that the DepEd was accountable of

the effects of K-12 on graduating students and gave some solution on how
the department may improve it which then still ended up that K-12 had

made thousands of student felt like they've been delayed.

This article persuaded the readers effectively by telling them some true life

experiences yet not giving them such subjective opinions and only provide

concrete, objective evidences about the topic.

At first, you can tell that the first main point was indeed effective because of

the supporting evidences and the use of statistics. It was stated that a

Jobstreet report shows that only 24 percent of employers were willing to

hire K to 12 graduates as the rest still cited having a college degree as a

primary qualification for employment. This simply shows how strong the

statement support the main point which is employability and it effectively

indicates that the graduates from senior high would not be able to have any

competition in terms of workforce.

Just like what I've said earlier, there were some real life experience

involved to support the claim. She applied the story of luis who left to work

as call center agent and stated that, "I didn't learn much on my senior high

school." She also applied the story of Alexandra who was a former literary

writer in their school paper but settled for whatever jobs that were available.

According to her, "Hindi puwede 'yung ganitong klaseng buhay lang. I earn
for my education because I know I'll find purpose in it." These stories from

them had brought the readers' attention to believe at her points.

Chi's choice of words in her article are simple and easy to understand. It

can easily convince by general public. The informations and statements

used are relatable to the students who are still studying under this

educational system.

On the other hand, I think that the government's side was not fully

explained and involved in the article. It would have been more effective if

their side was often stated and then rebutted hardly to convince the readers

more and made them oppose to the educational system.

Although there were lack of explanations on the government's side, she

included some such as DepEd claim that "Employability was the top selling

point of the K to 12 curriculum" but was rebutted by the fact that the

graduates of senior high would not be able to compete with the workforce,

backed up with strong evidences.

Cristina Chi's "OPINION: K-12 is 6 Years of High School for Nothing"

shows the failures of the current educational system. Even if there were

some discrepancies upon its implementation, there are still solutions to

improve it.