Philippine Woes: The Sad Reality of The Philippine Education
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| Image Source: Philstar |
Albert Einstein, an intellectual giant in Science uttered that if he could name something that hindered his learning he would conclusively pinpoint that it’s his education. Well, we cannot deny this point of view of Einstein considering that his biography would definitely shout out that he was a freakin’, awe-inspiring eccentric student.
Well, I'm an avid fan of Albert but I don’t think that
following his footsteps of pessimism will give me an instant genius look. I’m
also one of the aspiring Scientist who took the ladder of not displaying any
interest in schooling yet I’m the one who still paddles in this endless ocean
of knowledge.
Well if I'm going to harness this whole rationality within
me, Education in the Philippines is a complete ridicule. You’re given a
tiresome time of roughly 10 hours with their boring talks which would later be
adjourned by having a rote-based assessment. In Computer Reference,
metaphorically, Schools are manufacturers of RAM not ROM. We’re only given a
single topic on each day, with an assessment on the following day, then another
discussion for the following day… hence, we’re forced to erase all what we
learned from the preceding day to give space for the new ones.
And… how could we define school based on its etymological
origin?
Well, it later came out from my Book in Classics that the
word “school” was actually a Greek word with the same literary significance of
“leisure”.
The most intriguing part isn’t about the etymology thingy
but upon how to establish any connection with the latter.
Does what we see as the 21st Century Leisure is the
transformation of Humans to Robots just like how students were given multiple
tasks in a span of hour without a little consideration of their emotional
health (most specifically for those students who don’t have any coping
abilities to deal with academic stress) and any signs of complaint is a sign of
discouragement.
Pssh~! I also don’t
get that idea why teachers always start their first-day discussion on Grading
system instead of giving the possible lessons we’re going to tackle for the
semester. Every subject teacher would definitely have this monotonous tone of
“Ayaw jud mo’g pagtuon kay ihagbong tamo!”, “Pagsag-ulo jud mo’g maayo kay
dagko biya ko muhatag ug grado.” Well, this is just a perfect archetypal of the
modern-day ignorance, memorizing a single piece of facts without touching its
significance, just like how every student lacks the critical thinking skills of
assessing the credibility of every fact published in every DepEd-published
books.
Philippine Education is a complete miseducation and
uneducation. It’s the societal opium that drowns the youth to alienation. And
all I see are the proudest parents, expressing their lavish feeling of
accomplishments through tarpaulins and a boastful social media posts; taking
pride about the ends of hard work from the so-called “Diploma Mill”.
Disregarding that the Philippines is a good source for a cheap labor and
putting behind the idea that grades aren’t a good parameter of intelligence and
grades are just the product of an induced competition in order to sell themselves
at a higher price in the skilled-labor market. Graduation isn’t the end of studying nor a time to rejoice for
it’s the threshold for someone that he/she is entering the world of oppression,
which they taught to be the noble days to give their service for the
humanitarian development or it’s just their materialist egos which think that
having diploma is the best way they could satisfy their crazed consumer goals.
And where here demanding for quality? Well in fact! Philippine schools were
like bestowing diplomas like piso-print.
History can be the best reference point one could view to
show that the Philippine Education isn’t efficacious in instilling an
intellectually-liberated mind. Remember that Erap, a convicted plunderer was
impeached due to corruption and perjury and yet he was almost re-elected as
president in 2010 elections if it were not for Aquino whose mother’s timely
death caught the glare of publicity. As well as with the late dictator,
Ferdinand Marcos who was ousted out in position due to offenses such as
atrocities, electoral sabotage, conspired crony capitalism, and questionable
expenditures of public funds and yet years later he has been buried as a hero.
And how education acted this sick stupidity of within this shameful course of
Philippine History? Education should act as doctors of this widespread social
cancer considering that DepEd is the only sector granted with a lion’s share of
the Philippines’ national budget. It just proves that Philippines’ GDP and
taxes were just wacked. With so many licensed teachers who only teach not by
conviction but to teach as being told to do so. Educators who are only licensed
but not empowered by a social mission. Who are only for their positions/jobs as
an economic animal for items, tenure, and profit. All those mission-vision of
DepEd has been purely degenerated by the superior’s economic motive.
At large, Education nowadays is now an investment in the
economy (as a politico-economic tool to serve the interest of the ruling class)
rather than pure, sheer garnering of knowledge.
The intrusion of this whole capitalistic philosophy is
bogus. It’s a total b**sh*t. People with the utility/money are more privileged.
If only education were as genuine and innocent as during the Enlightenment
Period, we’d have a million of Einsteins and Picassos by now.
Its whole purpose is lost. It's now a battleground, not a
breeding ground. I would rather educate myself than to succumb to unnecessary,
selfish and superficial educational system.
I think only self-education is the only genuine form of
education.. that is driven by pure curiosity and inquisition.
I don’t get how these troubles (aforementioned above) were
still undiagnosed even today… If the majority of the students still take Rizal
as the National Emblem of a Hero, then we should probably get a much more
serious work on the critical side of teaching pedagogy.
