Before I give my opinion on this particular topic, let me expound the details of it. First, the ten-point agenda is all about the improvement of the Philippine’s education system. There are ten main points, one of which is the 12-year Basic Education Cycle. According to barriosiete.com, this will supposedly expand the basic education system to a more globally-comparable twelve years instead of the ten-year basic education system we have now.
Hmm… this means that a school year will be added to the elementary and to the high school level. Whoop’tee’doo that means parents will actually suffer more, and based to how most Filipinos are suffering now, how do the people [who thought of this] think this will help them? We’ve all heard about the higher possibility of going abroad and stuff like that if the 12 year education cycle is implemented, but how would Filipinos go abroad if in high school or even in elementary, people won’t graduate and won’t be able to reach and graduate from college due to financial problems and the like. How would something be an improvement when it’s actually going to be the root of the problem? Sure, go add a year more to elementary and high school. Sure, don’t consider the fact that the funds given to DepEd will not be entirely used for their purpose. Sure, go for it. Go for the total financial loss of thousands of Filipino families who planned to pay for a 6 years elementary (excluding kindergarten) and 4 years high school’s worth of funds. If some of you don’t get my point, I’m being ironic and I’m using irony because I am starting to get irritated by this decisions people make now a days.
Let me quote what Christopher Bernido said. It goes "If you go from the 10-year to the 12-year cycle, it's like jumping from the frying pan to the fire. It will be a complete disaster."He’s actually right. We are currently in the frying pan, where we are already okay. Why must we go away from somewhere we are okay to a point where we would get burned? There are just so many other ways to improve the education system like Mr. Christopher Bernido (favorite person of this blog) has also said that the DepEd needs to focus on improving the quality of teachers before adding years to the cycle which is very right. The problem is not with the number of years that a kid would spend going to school, the problem is with the teachers (not all but most). Imagine having an English teacher who would, most of the time, be grammatically wrong. For cherries’ and bananas’ sakes! An English teacher can’t and is not supposed to teach English to a young child if he/she would be teaching that child the wrong things to say. It would be better if improvement of the quality of teachers comes first before the addition of 2 years in high school and elementary.
We’ve just seen the bad side of the Ten-point agenda. Let’s see the nice points too. Yes indeed, the ten-point agenda is not that bad. There are also many programs that could help children and their many problems regarding books, increase the reading proficiency of children, help in the rationalization of mediums of instruction, help in building more schools, help in assisting private schools, increase the proficiency in Math and Science, bring technical vocational education as an alternative stream in senior high school, make the Madaris education as a sub-system within the education system, and have the universal pre schooling for children. This ten-point agenda’s “points” seem to be nice solutions to the educational problems of the country, but it would not work well if not done right. The more pressing issues should be dealt with first with the surely successful solutions before those issues to be dealt with points in the agenda that would not be surely successful if implemented. It’s like trying to clean a polluted river. You must clean the upstream first before cleaning the downstream. If you clean the downstream first, the polluted water from the upstream would, again, pollute the cleaned downstream.
Here’s the poem I would like to share with you:
A twelve point agenda may be what we need
To control most problems it might be the one seed
That brings forth the longed for and fruitful tree
And from our educational problems we’ll be set free.
Will Noynoy know what to do?
Will he save the future for me and you? (if you’re a Filipino student)
All we can do is hope for the best
And this 12 year education cycle be implemented on the rest.
I hope I’ll graduate as a fourth year.
To go to fifth year, this is exactly what I fear.
Hubaba, Cherries and Bananas, a blog by Andrea Mae G. Sanchez is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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