Rose Buenconsejo

03/23/2024, Reflection Paper 7

EDFD 202, Prof. Edwin B. Estrera

Our class’ recent discussions and reports are about the issues in Philippine education. Last week, we
discussed different studies, programs, and reforms regarding access to education and functional
literacy issues of the Philippines, specifically about Education for All (EFA) to MATATAG curriculum.
Access to education is probably the highlight of EFA; while improving the overall functional literacy
is the highlight of MATATAG curriculum, which is mostly a response to our low performance in
international and local assessment tests.

However, what do we call this type of literacy problem?

I have mentioned this many times that one of the reasons why I enrolled to M. Ed. is to understand
the choices we made during the last national election. This is up for debate since it’s very subjective,
but when we were given very solid choices of good and bad – when there was a very distinct
demarcation line between good and bad, a great majority of us went for the bad choice.

And, now seeing social media posts expressing regrets of their decision is a confirmation that
indeed we made bad decisions during the last national election. However, this regret does not come
with any true realization when they want Duterte’s brand of government to come back because they
find the current government poor in performance.

It’s so mindf*cked. The math is not math-ing! Why can we not make the connection that Duterte is
causing the misery that we are now? Why can we not see that Duterte is fully responsible for putting
the current elected president? I believe that there’s no need for some higher level of education to
see this very obvious connection; it’s loud and clear staring at our face.

So my question is what kind of “illiteracy” is this? What kind of education do we need to address
this?

“TRANSFORMATIVE” LITERACY VS FUNCTIONAL LITERACY

We started this semester discussing transformative and emancipatory education, Freire-ian

approach, and James Baldwin essay, among others. However, when we went into discussion about
Philippine education, it was then mostly focused on “functional literacy.” It is just right because
functional literacy is a pressing issue with the poor results coming from international assessment
institutions and local national tests. There seems to be pressure from assessment institutions to
resolve functional literacy.
But are they not one and the same? For me, we can say that functional literacy is something that can
be measured through assessment tests. Meanwhile, there are probably no standardized assessment
tests for “reflective” / transformative literacy; we can only see its effect when we have the likes of
Robin Padilla as number 1 senator.

So after all the reports and discussions about programs and reforms to elevate our functional
literacy, it’s still not giving for me. I feel that they just do not hit the target, the root cause of the
problem. And, I feel that this is why we are stuck in the “When Reforms Don’t Transform…” era
(Bautista et al, 2009).

MISSING LAYERS

Clearly, in this course EDFD 202, our ultimate goal is a Transformative Education / Literacy. For a
transformative literacy to happen, there should be functional literacy, and basic literacy. For all
these different levels of literacy to happen, citizens should have “access” to education. But for a
developing country like ours, before the marginalized population can access the “access to
education,” poverty should be addressed separately.

However, these 2 “layers,” poverty and transformative literacy, are not given enough focus in studies
and reforms formulated by government agencies concerned with education. Poverty is simplified by
hinging it on access to education, while transformative literacy is usually equated with functional
literacy.
Thus, most of our reforms are reflective of the saying that “education is the solution to poverty.” As
such, this seems to be the big driver for institutionalizing free access to education for all (EFA).
However, for a developing country like ours, despite making schools very accessible, “access” may
still seem so out of reach because of poverty. We know that even if the school is built in the backyard
of a marginalized child, there are still many challenges he needs to face before he can set his foot
inside the classroom. For example, when a child is faced with going to school or earning an income
for the family’s basic needs, easy and free access to school may still not put the child in school.

Thus, it always boggles me, what should be addressed first: access to education or poverty?

With this kind of intertwining societal issues, a transformative and emancipatory education is
necessary. Complex societal issues require complex analysis. Transformative literacy provides a tool
to the people to engage in deeper reflection on issues, enabling them to break down the different
layers of intertwining complex societal issues to get to the bottom of the problem. Being able to see
and reflect on the different layers and factors, people can then also formulate a more methodical /
systematic approach in solving all the encompassing problems in a societal issue.
Having a better grasp of societal issues, people can now articulate better their reflections and
possible solutions to an issue. This enables them to demand better solutions from the government
agencies and officials; and, that they will no longer be easily swayed with haphazard short-term
solutions.

RESOLUTION

Functional literacy (educational) crisis and poverty are entirely 2 different societal issues. Both are
complex issues. Education can indeed help people out of poverty; however to get education, one
must have enough means to sustain through the required (length of) education to get them into the
productive workforce, for them to be a profitable human resource. Thus, as mentioned above,
poverty should be addressed separately.

Some would say that poverty is a complicated problem to solve; but some might say that it’s an easy
problem. If we’d look at poverty through a capitalist mindset, it’s a complicated social issue to solve.
However, if we look at it through progressive socialist (I’m making up this term), it makes all the
sense to solve poverty.

Thus, transformative education is necessary to help people navigate in resolving this complex
societal issue – to not get into the trap of “reforms that do not transform.”

In relation to transformative education, MATATAG Curriculum has the ingredient to foster

transformative literacy, based on the pedagogies it suggested to use: constructivist, inquiry-based,
reflective, collaborative, and integrative pedagogical approaches. However, we know that in reality,
we lack these “ingredients.” For one, there's a budget constraint. At this rate, realistically, we
probably can only afford barely functional literacy, especially that our budget has to deal with
unnecessary bureaucracy and corruption. Also, we have to take into account that educators (or
most of us) are educated through banking methods. Thus, as much as teachers need training to be
more effective, they also need to unlearn to be effective.