Inocencio, Simon Alfonse U.

Critical Reflection

The landscape that is the education system is greatly different than it was before. I have
learned that the way I studied just a few years ago is the same way that my grandparents and
likely their parents as well. Considering how different the world is today and how greatly
technology has advanced, I think it is definitely a problem that education has not changed with it.
Perhaps this is a symptom of a different problem in our education system that prevents it from
changing. After all, not just in the temporal dimension, students in the entire country are being
taught the same things so we are challenged in this aspect even geographically.
I think this brings us to one of the greatest challenges in our education system: the
hierarchical system that is our department of education. Because input from the institutions will
have to reach the higher authorities in the department in order for a decision to be made.
Considering that our department of education is the biggest bureaucracy I our country with
thousands of institutions to manage, it is obvious that this would be an inefficient way to make
our decisions. Naturally, this would result in an education system with more standardization to
be as efficient as possible. In a country with as much cultural variation as ours, this will
undoubtedly be a problem.
This is not the only problem that our education system faces. It is no secret that our
citizens lack trust in our government. While this may be seen as reasonable due to the amount of
corruption our country suffers, this prevents genuinely helpful efforts from the government from
gaining momentum as projects by the government will tend to be seen as ways for politicians to
line their pockets. While this is not necessarily untrue, authorities with genuinely good intentions
may be prevented from doing their work due to this.
These factors combined make for a uniform education system capable of gradual change
at best or is stagnant at worst. In a world that constantly changes at an increasingly fast pace, it
will be unable to keep up. This brings us to the biggest change that we are currently going
through. That is, the pandemic. This pandemic is one of the biggest changes that our education
system has had to face in recent history. It is also an interesting time because it is one of the few
times where we are forced to adapt urgently. Of course, due to the drastic effect of the pandemic
on the entirety of society, it may be unreasonable to put the blame on these problems. However,
millions of learners are predicted to not enroll in the next school year due to the pandemic. This
means that the shift from traditional classrooms to virtual ones is unsuccessful for millions of
students. The lack of flexibility of the education system should account for at least a portion of
the inadequate response that led to this result.
I think that the best path for our country to take if we are to progress through these
challenges is a very difficult one. For us to progress, I think our education will need to make
massive reconstruction. I think reconstruction is more accurate because it will need to be
completely different than the way we do it before. The massive differences in culture and
circumstances makes a standardized education much less effective than it could be. For
something as pivotal as this to happen, however, I think our country will have to start putting its
trust in our leaders. This is the first and likely the harder step for us to take. With our country’s
history of corruption and our citizens’ fighting against it in the past, placing trust in our leaders is
not something a lot of our people are willing to do. However, for the education system to be
more personal, jurisdiction over institutions will have to be done more and more by our
educators themselves. In order for quick and effective decision-making, our teachers will have to
take charge. This kind of an education system is very different than what we have now.
However, it is what we greatly need and even more so now. A change as great as this will require
trust. Our leaders will need the trust of their people so that they may make the changes that we
need.

References

Montemayor, M. T. (2020, July 21). 21.7M learners enrolled for incoming school year: DepEd.
Philippine News Agency RSS.
https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1109587#:~:text=MANILA%20%E2%80%93%20The%2
0Department%20of%20Education,and%201%2C219%2C094%20in%20private%20school
s.