Educ 100 Reaction Paper 1

“It Takes a Village to Raise a Child”

As Dingdong Dantes in the documentary “Ang Antas ng Edukasyon sa Pilipinas” quoted,

“It takes a village to raise a child”. This quote rings true especially in the modern sense, as good
education is highly-regarded as one of the most important things that a child can get. The
question the documentary ultimately poses, then, is how can we ensure good education when
public schools, whether in urban or rural areas, struggle to provide basic education to children?

One of the key focuses of the documentary is the state of public school teachers in the
Philippines. According to the documentary, Filipino teachers are one of the worst-paid teachers
in Asia, earning a measly 17,000 pesos per month. Comparing this income to other Asian
countries, it is not hard to see why the youth are disheartened from possibly considering
teaching as their profession. Public school teachers are also burdened with titanic teaching
loads. One of the examples given in the documentary was the Batasan Hills Elementary School
where the teacher-to-student ratio was 1-to-80, where the ideal was 1-to-46. In another
example, one teacher was in charge of all classes from Grades 1 to 4, along with preschool
classes.

The problem of shortage of teachers can be traced back to the declining number of the
Licensure Examination for Teachers (LET) passers in recent years. Republic Act 7836 (1994),
requires teachers to obtain a license before being able to teach. It is alarming, therefore, that
the passing rates in recent years for the LET for both the Elementary and Secondary levels are
low (according to PRCBoard.com). Adding to this shortage of teachers is the gender stereotype
in professions. In recent years, teaching has been seen as a job for women (Jayaweera, 1997).
In the Philippines, this is a far cry from the colonial American and Spanish education systems
where only male American soldiers and priests and Spanish priests were allowed to teach. This
gender stereotype drives potential male public elementary school teachers from pursuing their
careers, leading, again, to the shortage of teachers.

In the modern context, especially in the Philippines, education is seen as a vehicle to

save oneself and one’s family from poverty (Jayaweera, 1997). Yet, with the current situation of
Philippine public basic education, an escape from poverty seems bleak for most of the Filipino
underprivileged masses. More often than not, families with more than one child send their
children to school for the first two or three grades – so that they can learn how to read, write,
and count. Parents would then have to choose which of their children to send to school as an
investment, with their other children helping with the family income.

Personally, it took me not a documentary but firsthand experience, coming from a public
school, to realize all of these problems in our educational system. Throughout my whole stay in
Elementary School, I had only encountered three male teachers out of twenty. Being an honor
student, I was also able to be close to my teachers and ask them about their professions early
on, and their complaints about their salaries and teaching loads do hold water. I have also found
out that sometimes public school teachers are made to teach subjects they aren’t prepared for,
for example one of my elementary school teachers specializing in teaching mathematics was
made to teach home economics due to the lack of staff.

I am not well-versed enough to tell if the government or the Department of Education

have been taking steps to alleviate the problems above, but with the rise of globalization, I am
sure that we could not keep up as a country to the rest of the world if these trends and problems
continue. It takes a village to raise a child, and it is sad to see the times when the village does
not have the capability to do so.

REFERENCES
1. Professional Regulation Comission (n.d.). Republic Act No. 7836. Retrieved 10 August 2017
from: http://www.prc.gov.ph/uploaded/documents/PROFESSIONAL%20TEACHERS-
LAW1.pdf

2. PRCBoard.com (n.d.). LET Results March 2017 Elementary Level. Retrieved 10 August 2017
from: http://www.prcboard.com/2017/05/LET-Result-March-2017-Elementary-Level.html

3. PRCBoard.com (n.d.). LET Results March 2017 Secondary Level. Retrieved 10 August 2017
from: http://www.prcboard.com/2017/05/LET-Result-March-2017-Secondary-Level.html

4. Jayaweera, S. (1997). “Women, Education, and Empowerment in Asia.” Gender and

Education 9(4):411–23. Retrieved 10 August 2017 from:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cgee20