Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts

Volume 2, Number 20              June 23 - 29,  2002                     Quezon City, Philippines







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Philippine Education’s Millennium Woes

Shortage in Books, Teachers, Rooms Greet Opening of Classes

Shortage of classrooms, desks and armchairs during school openings is an old story that is passed from one generation to another. Yet this tale remains one of the top stories not only during school openings but throughout the whole year round too.

By GERRY ALBERT-CORPUZ
Bulatlat.com

The site of students all packed inside small classrooms as well as shortages in teachers and textbooks during school day openings are not strange to Bayan Muna party list representative Liza Maza, being the secretary general of women's group Gabriela and staunch defender of youth and students rights and welfare.

But what greeted her last Monday, June 17, the opening day of the classes, managed to elicit an intensity 7-like jolt from Bayan Muna's fighting solon in the House of Representatives. 

Representative Maza found that around 68 students are packed in small classrooms for 12 hours. She said students only have a 30-minute lunch break and two 15-minute recess breaks adding that students are subjected to conditions worse than that of the average exploited worker in the factories. 

"It is likewise inhumanly possible for teachers to teach effectively for 12 hours a day for six days,” Maza said. “It is not surprising that the quality of our education drops every year." 

The activist solon joined members of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) in monitoring the situation of public schools in Quezon City in the opening day of classes. After visiting Lagro High School, she took notice of the conditions as she stressed the need for a bigger budget allocation for education. 

Maza told Bulatlat.com that while conditions at the Lagro High School are bad, the situation is worse in elementary and high schools in the provinces, especially in remote barangays. The education department should have resolved this cycle of classrooms, teachers and textbooks shortages years ago, she said. 

Same old story 

Shortage of classrooms, desks and armchairs during school openings is an old story to tell that is passed from one generation to another. Yet this tale remains one of the top stories told not only during school openings but throughout the whole year round too. 

The staff of Bayan Muna representative Maza said nationwide the country is short of 18,624 classrooms and 2,318,943 desks and armchairs. The government's abandonment and commercialization of education can be further glimpsed by facts and figures depicting the sorry state of the country's educational system. 

According to ACT, the average student-ratio is one teacher per 50 to 60 students in public elementary and high schools. The militant teachers' group said there are about 443,658 public school teachers in both public and elementary while a 18.6 million students were enrolled in both public and private schools across the country last year. 

Last year, textbook requirements for 18 million students for grade school and high school students reached 21.5 million. 

ACT deputy secretary general Raymund Villanueva lamented that while the Macapagal-Arroyo administration failed to address gross shortages in teachers, books, desks, classrooms and other education materials, the regime has increased its national spending for military, police and intelligence services. 

"She said her government's priority is education,” Villanueva said. “That's baloney! She's indeed a quintessential liar and a top-notch songbird for capitalist school owners in the country." 

Villanueva said aside from educational deficiencies on classrooms and textbooks, teachers are also complaining of very low salaries. Teachers' monthly gross pay is pegged at P10,000 while the average monthly net salary is only around P6,000, way below the poverty threshhold of P15,230 set by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA). 

"They work triple time, but what they get from the national government are low compensations and scores of insults," he added. 

Millennium curriculum for modern day slavery  

Maza, meanwhile, asserted that the Millenium Curriculum will exacerbate the yearly drought in classrooms, textbooks and teachers. ACT’s Villanueva echoed Bayan Muna's representative view on the controversial basic revised curriculum. He said the millennium curriculum will result in longer teaching hours for teachers who are already overworked, burdened with classes that have as many as 80 students per classroom. 

"The new curriculum will perpetuate poverty and economic underdevelopment because it remains geared toward producing cheap laborers for multinationals as well as for export of contract workers," he said. 

For his part, Carl Anthony Ala, secretary-general of National Network of Agrarian Reform Advocates-Youth Sector (or Nnara-Youth) said the millennium curriculum is designed to mold students like people of less substance, less critical and practically working robots for transnational groups and imperialist interests. 

Under the revised curriculum, subjects like History, Music or Cultural Arts and Social Studies will be treated as elective courses. Treating these subjects as elective courses, Ala said, will transform students and teachers like a current homogenous group of future unthinking slaves for multinational and transnational groups. 

"No patriotism, no historical sense just plain actors programmed for modern-day slavery, that's what Macapagal-Arroyo and DepEd Secretary Raul Roco want to accomplish under the millennium curriculum," the militant youth leader added. 

Corporate assets, not patriots  

"President Macapagal-Arroyo and Secretary Roco have masteral degrees in their respective fields but they are not homegrown patriots,” Ala also said. “They are crazy political hackers and have offended our people's sense and passion for history and patriotism in defense of super profits." 

The militant youth leader said Macapagal-Arroyo and her education secretary are not patriots but career-oriented politicians whose obsolete views on education have plagued the educational system in its current moribund state. With the widespread poverty and landlessness in the countryside coupled with the rising cost of education in the country, peasant parents will not be able to send their children to school, he said. 

The group said state policies like millennium curriculum and all-out liberalization in agriculture will jeopardize the chances of 30 million kids in rural areas to go to school this year. For instance, in Mindoro Oriental province, for every 100 peasant children, 50 will finish Grade Six, while only 20 can proceed to high school. 

"This is not propaganda, this is for real,” he said. “We hope the likes of Macapagal-Arroyo and former Senator Roco would stop creating a national illusion from an equally bankrupt program like the millennium curriculum." 

Roco downplayed the protests staged by ACT and other militant groups during the opening day of classes in Metro Manila against the millennium curriculum, the tuition hikes and other education issues. The education secretary’s own assessment said 90 percent of public school teachers were happy in adopting the revised system. 

"Let him savor the taste of his own lies, but we will not allow Gloria and Secretary Roco to take a walk in the park and escape from this super crime of the millennium," Nnara-Youth said. Bulatlat.com


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