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Module 1: PROBLEMS & ISSUES IN PHILIPPINE EDUCATION

Objective: The students should be able to:

 Have a glimpse on Philippine education; and

 Look closely at the important issues that need to be resolved by the government.

Introduction

Philippine education is strongly viewed as a pillar of national development and a primary

avenue for social and economic mobility. It has undergone several stages of
development from the pre-Spanish time to the present. It is handled by three
government organizations, namely, the Department of Education (DepEd), the
Commission on Higher Education (CHED), and the Technical Education and Skills
Development Authority (TESDA). DepEd governs both public and private basic
education in all levels, with its mission 'to provide quality basic education that is
equitably accessible to all by the foundation for lifelong learning and service for the
common good.'

The Filipino people have deep concern for education because it occupies a central
place in political, economical, social, and cultural life in the Philippines. The government
allocates a high budget every year for Philippine education and guarantees that every
Filipino has the right to quality education. However, there are some important issues
that the government have been looking closely and continuously resolving. Among the
issues are:

1. Quality of Education – This is the first major issue that the Philippine
government should resolve but somehow it is recently improving. The quality of
Philippine education has declined few years ago due to poor results from
standard entrance tests conducted among elementary and secondary students,
as well as the tertiary levels. The results were way below the target mean score.
High dropout rates, high number of repeaters, low passing grades, lack of
particular language skills, failure to adequately respond and address the needs of
people with special needs, overcrowded classrooms, and poor teacher
performances, have greatly affected the quality of education in the Philippines.

2. Affordability – There is a big disparity in educational achievements across social

groups. Students from wealthy families have excellent educational background
gained from exclusive private schools at the start of their education until they
finish college. Unlike the students from the less fortunate families, wherein most
of them could not even finish neither elementary nor secondary level because of
poverty. They could barely afford to buy school shoes and pencils, not even the
tiny amount of tuition fees from the public schools.
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3. Budget – The government was mandated by the Philippine Constitution to

allocate the highest proportion of its budget to education. However, among the
ASEAN countries, the Philippines still has one of the lowest budget allocations to
education. This is due to some mainstream political issues and problems that the
government is facing specially corruption.

4. Mismatch – There is a large proportion of mismatch between training and actual

jobs. This issue arises at the tertiary level and causes a large group of
unemployed and underemployed. This is very true nowadays because of the
arising Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industries particularly the call center
companies. Hundreds of thousands of young professionals, graduates or
undergraduates from college level settled at this type of company because of the
attractive compensation that they are offering. Call center companies do not
require a specific degree of education, what matters to them is the proficiency in
the English language.

5. Colonial historiography--Most of the past and present teachers, book authors,

and Social Studies consultants pay more attention to the history of the colonizers
in the Philippines, and not to the history of Filipinos. Mostly, this has been the
case in the teaching of History subjects from the elementary to tertiary levels and
will most likely perpetuate in the next generations to come. The history of the
Filipino people and the colonial history of the Philippines are two different topics
altogether.

6. Internationalization of the division of labor--To a certain extent, the Philippine

educational system conditions its students to be skillful in mathematics and
computer literacy, fluent in foreign languages (specifically English and Nihongo),
in order to serve as workers of the transnational businesses of the advanced,
capitalist countries. Take the case of the call center phenomenon in the
Philippines, India and other developing states.

7. Deprivation and demoralization of teachers--Teachers, more often than not,

are victimized by the over-worked and under-paid policy of the system of the past
and present provisions. This leads to the deprivation and demoralization of their
ranks. This probably explains why the teaching profession is not attracting the
best and the brightest from the crop of students anymore. Expectedly, this will
correspondingly result in the vicious cycle of mediocrity in education.

8. Fly-by-night educational institutions--By any measure, the proliferation of fly-

by-night educational institutions is counter-productive. In the long run, it produces
a pool of half-baked, unprepared, and incompetent graduates. Alarmingly, the
country is having an over-supply already. Some would even consider them
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as liabilities than assets. This case is true for both undergraduate and graduate
studies.

9. Culturally and gender insensitive educational system--Women, the common

tao and the indigenous people are almost historically excluded from the Philippine
historiography in favor of the men, heroes from Luzon and the power elite.
Women are marginalized and trivialized even in language of education. Take the
case of the terms female lawyer (as if lawyer as a profession is exclusive only
to men) and manpower (which should have been human resources or human
capital to be more politically correct).

10. State abandonment of education--In the name of colonial globalization, the

state — in an incremental fashion — is abandoning its role to subsidize public
education particularly in the tertiary level. This comes in the form of matriculation,
laboratory and miscellaneous fee increases in order to force state colleges and
universities (SCUs) to generate their own sources of fund. Ironically, the bulk
of the budget goes to debt servicing.

11. Sub-standard textbooks--Some textbooks which are already in circulation are

both poorly written and haphazardly edited. Take the case of the Asya: Noon
at Ngayon with an identified total number of more than 400 historical errors.
Unfortunately, it is just one of the many other similar badly written textbooks which
are yet to be identified and exposed. This is a classic case of profit-centeredness
without regard to social accountability.

12. Widespread contractualization--In the name of profit, owners and

administrators of several private schools commonly practice contractualization
among their faculty members. Contractual employees unlike their regular/tenured
counterparts are not entitled to fringe benefits which consequently reduces the
over-all cost of their business operation. Job insecurity demeans the ranks of the
faculty member.

13. Undue disregard for specialization--Some colleges and universities encourage

their faculty pool to be generalists (under the guise of multidisciplinary approach
to learning) in order to be able to handle various subjects all at once. But some
faculty members have turned out to be objects of mockery and have lost their self-
esteem since some of them were pushed to handle Technical Writing, General
Psychology, Filipino, and Algebra at the same time. This is prevalent among
some franchised academic institutions even if the subjects are already off-tangent
their area of interest and specialization.
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14. Copy-pasting culture--Over-dependence to the cyberspace has dramatically

reduced the capability of students (even teachers) to undertake research. ‘Copy-
pasting’ has even turned into a norm among some students whenever they are
tasked to submit a research paper or even a film review. Needless to say,
plagiarism has already transformed into a more sophisticated form in the context
of today’s electronic age.

15. Mc Donaldized education--The system, methodology, and even content

of education in the Philippines are mere haphazard transplantation from the West.
It is therefore Eurocentric, culturally insensitive, and non-reflective of the local
milieu. This is based on the xenocentric (foreign-centered) premise that other
culture or system is far more superior than one’s own.

16. The problem of non-sustainability and non-continuity--Teachers,

administrators and publishers are all left in limbo whenever the DepEd would
come up with another totally different directive from what it used to have
in a rather very sudden interval. Take the case of the grading system, timeframe
allotted to various subjects, MAKABAYAN program, readiness test, and learning
competencies.

17. Poor regard for liberal art/education--Liberal education is intended to form

a holistic individual equipped with communication, critical thinking, mathematical,
creative, inter-personal and intra-personal skills. This explains why we also have
Philosophy, Languages, Humanities, Natural Science, Social Science, Physical
Education and even Theology in our college curriculum, and not only our major
subjects. The curriculum is specifically designed to produce a total person, and
not only a technical specialist. Unfortunately, the desired objective is not being
met at all since liberal education is regarded only as a set of minor subjects.

With the way these subjects are being handled (taking into account both content
and methodology), students view the entire exercise as an unnecessary
duplication of what they have already covered in high school. Equally alarming
is the lack of enthusiasm and motivation exhibited by some professors to handle
the subject especially if they believe that it has nothing to do with the course
or area of specialization of their students (say, Art Appreciation for Accounting
majors or Algebra for Creative Writing majors).

18. Education as a purveyor of myth--Education has been very effective

in mainstreaming and perpetuating the social myths in a subtle and indirect
manner. Some of these myths are the perceived superiority of white, educated
men, ‘official’ history as advanced by the western point of view, globalization
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as the only way to achieve economic development, and stereotypes against the
minoritized and the disenfranchised.

19. Further marginalization of the undersubscribed courses--In the name of profit

and as a response to the dictates of the market forces, colleges and universities
prefer to offer more courses in line with the health sciences like nursing, medical
transcription, and care-giving. This is done at the expense of the already
undersubscribed yet relevant courses like Area Studies, Pilipinolohiya (Philippine
Studies), Development Studies, Philippine Arts, Art Studies, Community
Development, Social Work, Islamic Studies, Clothing Technology, and Ceramics
Engineering.

20. Monolithic education--Some educators in the name of conservatism and for the
sake of convenience, prefer the old-style teaching paradigm where they view
themselves as the fountain of knowledge and their students as nothing but empty
vessels to be filled up (banking method of education). Modern education has
ushered in learner-centered approach to education (from being the smart actor
in the stage to just a guide on the side).

21. Atrociously boring teachers--As I always underscore, there are no boring

subjects, only boring teachers. But at least we should recognize them because
they still serve a purpose. They serve as bad examples.Brain drain--Apart from
the much debated political, social and psychological aspects, this ongoing mass
emigration constitutes an unparalleled brain drain with serious economic
implications. Arguably, the phenomenon also has an educational dimension,
as the Philippine society is footing the bill for the education of millions of people,
who then spend the better part of their productive years abroad. In effect, the poor
Philippine educational system is indirectly subsidizing the affluent economies
hosting the OFWs. With 95 per cent of all elementary students attending public
schools, the educational crisis in the Philippines is basically a crisis of public
education. The wealthy can easily send their offspring to private schools, many
of which offer first-class education to the privileged class of pupils.

There are some measures that the Philippine government has looked into for the
reformation of quality education. Technology use is starting to gain momentum in the
overall education of this country. This helped improve the quality of education in the
Philippines and to be globally competitive in this millennium.