Education: For the masses? Or for higher standards?

From What the eyes cannot see

It has been said that we were all born naked, both in terms of intellect and also in the physical sense. We know nothing of this world and we virtually survived the first six years of our lives relying on our pure instinctive nature. From then onwards we are enslaved into going to school to learn and forced to listen to teachers who keep yapping about science, english, math and etc without us truly grasping its purpose.

However, the fact remains that the people who belong to the upper class are the people that are well educated. Hence, we can’t really blame our parents when they forced us to go to school everyday; chances are, we will commit the same acts to our children. So why do we strive to pay a high price for a good education? When our kiddos grow up, we want them to be socially competent, able to fend for themselves and education can provide that.

As what the former senator and late gentleman Raul Roco said, poverty’s long term solution has been and always will be education. The main paradox is this - do we try to increase our literacy rate or do we need to focus on improving quality in our education system instead?

Literacy rate – the Human Development Index gives a really good emphasis to this. How many people can read and write? How many can understand the basics of addition and subtraction? How many among the population has an average IQ? All these questions start with “how many” and thus is based on volume alone.

Quality in the education system – on the other hand speaks more about “where” both nationally and internationally. Don’t get me wrong, the number of graduates would still be important when we talk about quality, but the aptitude level would be a precedent to volume.

So why did the Philippine government add another school year with DepEd’s approval? The argument states that our high school graduates are not equipped enough with the right knowledge, skills and abilities to land them a job. With this new system, this will create a holistic approach to secondary education whose aim is to meet the international standards wherein a high school graduate can already qualify for a white collar job. In the US, almost 70% of their population are just high school graduates yet majority of which are working in the corporate world. This is the goal in which our government aims to accomplish.

But is this the solution? I hardly think so. As they say, “If your trash bin is full, it might be a good time to take out the trash.” If we find something that is not working for our country, why do we always resort to making a bigger trash bin? Why can’t we just take out the trash first to make more space?

I went to one of the best schools in Cebu and I have to say, looking back, it was not really one of “the best” if you ask me. Yes we were winning the city quiz bowls on science and math; took trophies during oral declamation contests and got high NEAT and NSAT scores – but to me, there was so much more we could have done within the education system back then. And the education index also proves my opinions to be correct! The schools in the Philippines have dropped behind its neighbouring countries when it comes to international standards of education.

The Human Development Index (HDI) is being derived based on four elements: education, literacy, life expectancy and standards of living. Yes, literacy and education are two different components, hence, when we talk about education we need to start talking about quality and not just quantity because quite frankly, literacy can be taught at home anyway! We cannot think like little children like when we are faced with a problem, we tend to do more to get the desired result. Yes you may pass a difficult exam by studying for 20 hours a day! But wouldn’t you envy if another person passed the same difficult exam but only studied for 10 hours a day? We should start working smart by keeping the same input but getting better results.