Draining The Brain

ADDITION Of gardening too?

When the Department of Education (DepEd) decided to extend the school years of their elementary and high school students, most parents, particularly in the public schools, were reeling over the possible effects of such a decision in their budgets. Now that their agonies are extended, the only sensible thing to do left is to really plan the future as if preparing to go to war. The decision, however, was in keeping with the country’s rising illiteracy rate and the increasing turnaround of graduates who have been found incompetent in the corporate field. And extending it by a deuce of years will somehow minimize the negativity surrounding the degrading state of our educational system. Or so, they thought, at least.

Once the genie was released outside the bottle, there is no stopping the DepEd hierarchy of adding a few of its wish list to the transaction right from the get-go. And it was almost like a win-win situation for them at the start, trying too easy in convincing the public that our students are under-performing under the circumstances. Somehow the department sees the problem not in its content, but in the amount of time the student has to serve prior to his release from school. And the parents, as always, find it necessary to protest against the DepEd’s wishes, citing reasons of injustices a financial insecurity could possibly do to their children. And to make matters worse, the decision came at the expense of this recent price hike of just about everything, rocketing up to the neck perhaps, and eventually sending the less fortunate on the brink of economic loss.

If this is an attempt to somehow incinerate the brain drain epidemic the country is experiencing, then it is doing an unnecessary if not suspicious job of addressing the problem. Unnecessary because it only takes a cunning resourcefulness in these times to educate a person, what with the sudden rise of finishing schools around and the accessibility of the internet; suspicious because of the possibility of its budget being prone to mismanagement. Although it makes sense knowing that we need to retool our students for them to be competitive come employment time, but the chances of them gaining a notch higher than their previous state out of that additional years is somewhat minimal and sketchy. It is still a decision that begs an emergency plan if in case the additional load fails to draw enrollees on its leap years.

During the first half of the last century, or even before the Martial Law years, the educational system in the country was one of Asia’s best. Foreign students were enticed not only to study and attend some of our finest schools, but also to live eventually in the country for good. English was spoken everywhere, even in the wet market. Now, you can only speak the language when you’re in some Special Science class or some exclusive, gum-chewing Country Club, otherwise you run the risk of sounding hard, gay or a bit of a social climber. And we no longer possess those things that make our educational system a source of envy to the world, producing the likes of Carlos P. Romulo or even that late great Strongman of Ilocano descent. Nobody would want to study seriously in here, save for those whose standing in life bows constantly to the sitting few. In fact, you could make a case that a lot of our students, if their resources would permit, prefer to study abroad than suffer the consequences of that dissimulating educational program, a predicament that is keeping pace with the plight of our teachers, who are also suffering their own decline in our universities.

But why add a few more years of study when all this country need is a few more actions to take care of? The emphasis on quantity has long been a trait in our culture, and inserting it in our academe seemed almost inevitable, that it is bound to happen regardless of its stride in its own system. Most public school teachers are in a ton of work, weekends included, and the prospect of adding two more years into it will definitely cure some of them as well as those who would want to pursue a career in it. Besides, statistics in the registrar would prove that an elementary teacher in a public school system has an average of 40 students in one class. And if you repeat that over an extended period of 7 years, plus a static compensation that normally goes to loans and a significant number of teachers leaving the profession in favor of a domestic help somewhere abroad is a situation that doesn’t need a second look for it to make a point.

Like adding insult to an injury, the additional years of serving time in school somehow cripples the better angels of the impressionable. And as a result of it, young boys are forced into a life outside of school, to gamble in the streets, try his luck on the boxing ring, on the billiard table too, and into the cockpits as well, and consequently, young girls are traded as mere outlets disguised as call girls and sex slaves. But that is going too far really. If such cases of prostitution, child labor, delinquency, vandalism, or even malnutrition still present itself a problem in our government, as it always does, year in year out, what does that make if decisions such as the one DepEd tried to push through did turn in?

Maybe there’s nothing wrong with the intent of educating these students further by prolonging their stay in school, but nobody can take away the strain of such a stay that because of the extent of poverty and hunger and loss and all the other biblical proportions this country has suffered so far. The educational sector, DepEd no less, of all the offices in the government, should have been more sympathetic with the plight of the poor, the crippled lot, who happens to be the governing mass inside that crippled classrooms, instead of unleashing a few more years of school just so to collect its miscellany, no matter how bloody it becomes to the less fortunate.

We have all the gains we could have if we maintain the status quo of 6 years in elementary and 4 years in high school, a stance that leans more on the side of practicality than postulating on the idea of progress, even at the expense of Juan de la Cruz. We need a little tightening around the waist now instead of loosening up. For once, the country should at least use its love affair with the status quo in the right nerves, and not use it as a means of wooing the office of the Ombudsman to immune the presidency. But that is another problem to take.

Ever since integrating most of the lessons into one composite subject, chopping it to pieces so as to accommodate the objective of producing a "well-rounded personality" in its graduates, that education has taken a downward turn. We see students incapable of writing a sensible paragraph, much less in a simple declarative sentence; students who do not have any literary background, and worse, incapable of expressing themselves, English or in the dialect, in a clear, comprehensive way. The emphasis on science left us with nothing but the still problematic issues of our waste disposal, energy shortages and the utter lack of support from the government. One wonders that if this predicament is not cured by any means necessary, it is capable of diseasing the whole social strata, as more and more students are wasting their time, dealing subjects that doesn't speak well perhaps of their talents.

Even in a bureucratic giant such as the United States, despite having 7 years of elementary stuff, the country is still among the many who has a significant number of illiterates roaming around. And it insults the intelligence that our think-tanks are going the same way too, and in complete disregard of our own depleting resources. Need we remind ourselves that the shortest way between two points (knowledge and understanding) is not a straight line (progressing it with years), but a curb one (going back to the basics). This isn't a case of a cart before the horse, but the horse releasing itself from the cart. What are the guarantees of him passing in flying colors after getting old with his grades? None. And time is not a concern of every Filipino student. How about books, classrooms, teachers, guidance, or even a pair of shoes? Don't you think they deserve to have an increase also?

Recently, DepEd has launched , among other things, a summer reading program for the kids, with the intention of getting them out of the rut while waiting for the next school year. And some of the responses from the students themselves were quite indicative of the kind of reception the additional years would get. Some complained of the program as tiresome, while others are merely forced into attending the activity because the teacher said it so. Something is amiss in here. Maybe the department has been away for a while outside a regular classroom that they have failed miserably to achieve a sense of connection to their students. Classroom activities are potentially draining, and the only difference between enjoying an assignment and throwing it is the ability of the teacher to connect, and not intentionally disrupt the equilibrium of extending the time spent inside that classroom. That is simply overreacting.

It even drains your energy just thinking about it. The journey of adding years in school, suffice it to say, is still a long way from home. And the decision came at an unholy time with a lot of our basic commodities rising faster than we thought it could, and a lot of our poor folks rising in quantity even faster than we thought they would. Maybe this is just all part of the plan, like in a boxing match, the strategy of draining the opponent up until the last round before unleashing the knockout blow. And that would be a devastating punch, landing on the head perhaps, and clotting the blood inside, eventually draining the air out of it. Any student of the game knows that it would take some time before we could see any recovery, but sometimes it doesn't work that way. And we all know what that way is.

 Who framed Efren Peñaflorida? What happened to that alternative learning? What?