Failing grade
Published Feb 7, 2023 12:05 am
MEDIUM RARE
Jullie Y. Daza
Between the President and his Vice President, this is how they summed up the state of education: We have failed our teachers. We have failed our students.
Might we assume that the two highest officials of the land were referring to our public school system, not the private one? Or would such an assumption be off the mark? On the other hand, academics, teachers and learners and their parents should have their own theories to guess where education’s poor grades came from, and they would all be correct. Just a matter of degrees.
At any rate, the community of private educators has modestly kept mum on the subject of the quality of education. After all, private schools operate independently of the Department of Education, and they charge much higher fees even when their teachers are generally paid less than their counterparts in the public sector. The Philippines’ top private university did not get there cheap or by accident. Compared to the tuition-free University of the Philippines, some of the best private colleges and universities in this country are for millionaires and near-millionaires, speaking of quality (of instruction) and quantity (number of students and cost of enrolment, miscellaneous fees, such as on-campus parking, no kidding).
As if on cue, a survey has found that 88 percent of learners prefer to be taught in the national language.
As we’ve heard over and over again, the language you use at home is caught, not taught. Unfortunately, the survey did not poll the respondents on their preference for English as the medium of instruction. Are we forcing our pupils to learn too many tongues? But without English, education would be anti-poor!
A small sector of the private education system is represented by Chinese schools, where a typical day’s schedule consists of subjects taught in Mandarin in the morning and in English and Tagalog in the afternoon. In college, public or private, a curriculum without one or two foreign languages would be insular and parochial, depriving the graduate of a liberal, more worldly outlook.
Too much to ask? But the world isn’t what it used to be. Perhaps our public speakers could brush up on some of the most commonly used words in French, the language of seduction and diplomacy.
Jullie Y. Daza
Between the President and his Vice President, this is how they summed up the state of education: We have failed our teachers. We have failed our students.
Might we assume that the two highest officials of the land were referring to our public school system, not the private one? Or would such an assumption be off the mark? On the other hand, academics, teachers and learners and their parents should have their own theories to guess where education’s poor grades came from, and they would all be correct. Just a matter of degrees.
At any rate, the community of private educators has modestly kept mum on the subject of the quality of education. After all, private schools operate independently of the Department of Education, and they charge much higher fees even when their teachers are generally paid less than their counterparts in the public sector. The Philippines’ top private university did not get there cheap or by accident. Compared to the tuition-free University of the Philippines, some of the best private colleges and universities in this country are for millionaires and near-millionaires, speaking of quality (of instruction) and quantity (number of students and cost of enrolment, miscellaneous fees, such as on-campus parking, no kidding).
As if on cue, a survey has found that 88 percent of learners prefer to be taught in the national language.
As we’ve heard over and over again, the language you use at home is caught, not taught. Unfortunately, the survey did not poll the respondents on their preference for English as the medium of instruction. Are we forcing our pupils to learn too many tongues? But without English, education would be anti-poor!
A small sector of the private education system is represented by Chinese schools, where a typical day’s schedule consists of subjects taught in Mandarin in the morning and in English and Tagalog in the afternoon. In college, public or private, a curriculum without one or two foreign languages would be insular and parochial, depriving the graduate of a liberal, more worldly outlook.
Too much to ask? But the world isn’t what it used to be. Perhaps our public speakers could brush up on some of the most commonly used words in French, the language of seduction and diplomacy.