Tag Archives: President Noynoy

komentaryo

dear Dep Ed, on EFA and another additional year

early in the week, on one of those hectic mornings that I keep the TV on to Sapul sa 5 for company, I heard your plans for instituting public kindergarten as part of our educational system, and I could only tweet about it as violently as I could.

though of course in the midst of the violence in Egypt then (now turned into a version of people power eh?), and the fare hike, this was barely carried by the rest of the day’s news.

but I feel it needs to be said: it is stupid. and I say that with all due and possible respect to Bro. Armin Luistro. I imagine many others want to say it too, but will not for fear of the heavens. I have no such fear.

what I fear is that all the money that’s been allocated for education (wow, P207 BILLION PESOS!), something that the Dep Ed is so proud about, will go to nothing but a false sense of what ails the educational system. there are real problems of teaching teachers, changing the curriculum, improving learning attitudes in students, that the plan of the K-12 program fails to problematize.

given that, institutionalizing kindergarten is just unfair if not unjust, and ultimately heartless. just heartless.

it means a 13-year educational cycle yes? it means creating the need for extra classrooms, extra skills, extra money from teachers. and there is no point in saying that it will be free — because public education is free! — when anyone who’s talked to a parent who sends a child to public school will tell you that they spend, more than they can afford. and when that money runs out, when there’s no money other than for putting food on the table, education rightfully becomes a non-priority.

and here lies the problem with institutionalizing kindergarten for our poor: it begins the cycle of spending earlier, it creates a need that isn’t there at all.

because who truly goes to pre-school in this country other than the middle to upper classes? and they do because their families can afford it, because there is a pre-school industry that has burgeoned in the recent past. this is not to look down of pre-schools, but it is to say this: in many ways and many places (like Tiaong Quezon) it is nothing but a way of making money, preying on parents who are made to think their kids need it, that it is imperative to their growth and learning. these are the same spaces that have pre-school teachers with questionable capabilities, the ones who are un-learned in that particular area of expertise that is pre-school education.

In light of this, I want to know who Dep Ed imagines will be teaching public kindergarten. in the real and credible pre-schools, teachers studied to teach on this level, having gone through courses in child psychology and education, and are adept at handling children. what I can imagine is that Dep Ed’s getting existing teachers to teach additional classes for the younger students, forgetting that teaching pre-school is a very particular specialized skill. no one will get me to do it even with my years of teaching and my love for children.

it also seems like 10 steps back in pre-school education. instituting kindergarten in our public schools when it is being questioned, and when the notions of home schooling for the middle and upper classes is becoming more and more viable and logical: it keeps parents responsible for their children’s formative years, and if that means showing poor children how difficult life is in this third world context, then so be it.

meanwhile, Dep Ed’s overactive imagination allows them to piece two and two together –kindergarten and two more years to the education system — and see that it will fix our educational problems. that they even think this is the first step instead of curriculum revision, teacher seminars, wage hike for teachers, extra classrooms, better textbooks is beyond me. that they haven’t even called on volunteers from the industry to help out is proof of its refusal to change its policies, to revise it given other perspectives.

because really. tell me that i can teach in the public school closest to my house, and i will. tell me to teach teachers and i will come up with a plan. tell me to write a textbook and i will. on minimum pay, on practically volunteerism, and i will do it. as so many others will, i tell you. as so many others are willing to.

but you need to include us, you need to include the members of this nation, the ones who have taught for years, the ones who are willing to learn. Dep Ed has fantastic imagination as it is, but maybe what it lacks is creativity. along with some good sense about the educational system of decades past, what ails this, what will truly and really fix it.

creativity would also allow them to create a plan that isn’t about adding more years to the problematic 10 that’s already there, but about fundamentally changing from within, because they know what is wrong from within.

give us a plan Dep Ed, show us a plan that will allow us to help out, and feel like we’re part of the change this administration promises. additional years are stupid. even more so kindergarten. it’s a plan that’s doomed to fail. and one that no intelligent teacher will be for, will want to help out.

and pray tell, how will additional years mean fulfilling the goal of Education For All (EFA)? it will only mean more impoverished families giving up on education, because it takes longer to finish it now, which means it will cost more. and yes, this will only bring us to that vicious cycle of arguments about “but public education is free!” that only the naive would think to say.

EFA is the goal? well, at this point, EFAk naman Dep Ed.

komentaryo

month three of P-Noy: notes of a pinay*

and so it must be said, that September might have been the best month ever for P-Noy, at least compared to those first two months where things just weren’t going his way, or his way just seemed to be going wrong.

the past month, P-Noy conveniently left the country for a visit to the US at around the same time that the Incident Investigating and Review Committee (IIRC) submitted its report on the August 23 hostage tragedy to Malacanang. in the midst of questions on the report — on the fact that it was sent to China before it was revealed to us, on the fact that what we finally saw lacked the section on the IIRC’s recommendations — P-Noy left, with a 57-person delegation to go to the US and address a United Nations delegation.

and as they celebrated the 25 MILLION PESOS to be spent on that trip, it became clear that we were really just hungover from GMA and the kind of spending she did, that we are out to just draw these comparisons, forgetting that 25 MILLION PESOS is a fluggin’ huge amount for any trip. this amount, given the number of travel companions of P-Noy (which apparently includes his barber, baka nga naman humaba ang hair niya, baket ba), could be bigger than that of the Queen of England‘s (oh but maybe sister Kris would be proud?).

but let’s forget about that amount, why don’t we? after all, what should matter is that he has done well, he has done us proud. he delivered a speech at the UN General Assembly, where he promised justice and the fulfillment of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, where he enjoined the world to come up with its own people power (naks) towards balancing inequality and finding unity (naks ulit).

never mind that injustices continue in the country, ones that for some reason P-Noy doesn’t want to handle differently from his predecessor: there are the extrajudicial killings and the forced disappearances of activists, there remain political prisoners including the Morong 43.  maybe P-Noy needs to be reminded that the UN itself had sent Special Rapporteur Philip Alston to the country in 2007, and he promptly “convincingly attributed” these injustices to the armed forces. now i imagine that the P-Noy government thinks (1) that those armed forces aren’t his, which therefore absolves him of responsibility, and (2) that he has delegated this to CHR Head Etta Rosales who will promptly act on this.

if the former is true, then P-Noy has every reason to Free All Political Prisoners, yes? if the latter is true, then P-Noy has every reason to Free All Political Prisoners, yes.

but there’s more to that US trip than just that UN speech. P-Noy also brought home the bacon, the ham, some eggs to boot, all of which are extensions of or improvements on previous agreements with transnational American companies, none of which mean being freed from our foreign debt, something that was offered to Cory during her time, something that i wish P-Noy would ask for now, because i have to believe that it’s possible to repeal all debt.

more than anything else, versus how this US trip might have “saved” the Philippines in whatever way (including meeting Obama, naks, one more time!), the fact is that it was P-Noy who was saved by this trip from what was going on in Manila while he was away.

there was the question of jueteng, the ensuing debate, the truth that what’s needed is a creative alternative to it, versus its abolition which is downright impossible. make the government alternatives better than the illegal jueteng, and it will kill the latter. send me an email if you want a copy of this proposal, which really is premised on good ol’ common sense and a whole lot of living in a province where jueteng lords it over.

there was the attempted demolition of a squatter community in North Edsa QC, in favor of the Ayalas who are going to build (another!) mall on what was government property. now i don’t know about P-Noy, but conversations must be had with people from squatters’ communities because only then will he find that (1) they are squatters in Manila because they are victims of land grabbing and its contingent devaluation of rural livelihood in the provinces to big landowners (like the Cojuangcos) and developers (like the Ayalas); and (2) some of these individuals and households put out money to have the right to this space: there’s always money exchanged between squatters/vendors and local government officials and police. this is all under the table of course, and more than anything explains why Pinoys who live in squatters areas think they have a right to the space. the province-to-city migration meanwhile tells us what the government needs to develop for the squatter problem to be solved. (and pray tell, anti-squatter people, how it is productive that you are nothing but anti-squatter people who are ready to pounce on these people?)

ah, all these P-Noy left behind for his OICs to handle or mishandle. when he finally came home, he did so with a bang by saying that he was now for a birth control and family planning policy, which does tie in — though not completely — with the Reproductive Health Bill.

i can only cross all my fingers and toes that P-Noy doesn’t back down in the face of this Pinoy Church. that he doesn’t back down in the face of the devout Catholics in his life, which include his sisters.

that he doesn’t fear excommunication, reprimand, the loss of the Pinoy Church’s support. because in fact it’s about time that we see the separation of Church and State in this country. because only then will women cease to be sacrificial lambs to notion(s) of morality and correctness, the ones that maims and kills them every day.

come on P-Noy, you can do it!

*because the Aquino sisters are already counting down the months to their brother’s and family’s freedom from us all, seeing us as the burden in their lives as if their brother didn’t choose to run for office and didn’t want to win.