An absence of education

We have always maintained that a true test of a nation’s conviction to education is found in their national budget. What percentage is allocated to education? If you want to know the policy of any administration, do not listen to the pronouncements. Study the budget. Examine the results.

Before Martial Law, the Department of Education used to receive the lion’s share – more than a third of the national budget. It is no coincidence that when education was on the forefront of government responsibilities we were one of the top nations in Asia. Back then, the majority of the education budget was actually spent on infrastructure, books, teachers, and the students. Last year, we were dismayed to see that in a survey that the Department of Education is perceived to be one of the more corrupt agencies in the government by the public. In terms of spending – in 2005, 2.3% of the Philippines’ GDP was spent on education. The East Asian regional average is 3.6% in the same year.

One of the most important of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals is to achieve universal primary education by 2015. Again, the Philippines signed on in the year 2000 to work and achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. The target is to “Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary education.”

In January, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) released their Education for All — Global Monitoring Report 2010, subtitled Reaching the Marginalized. On the state of education in the Philippines and achieving the goal of universal primary education the reports says, “The Philippines provides a striking example of underperformance. With an average income four times that of the United Republic of Tanzania or Zambia, it has a lower net enrolment ratio. The unfavorable comparisons do not end there. Whereas the United Republic of Tanzania and Zambia have steadily increasing net enrolment ratios, the Philippines has stagnated. Given the country’s starting point in 1999, achieving universal primary education by 2015 should have been a formality. There is now a real danger that, in the absence of decisive political leadership, the country will miss the goal. In 2007, out-of-school numbers for children aged 6 to 11 broke through the 1 million mark…” To deprive school children of an education is to start them off with the greatest disadvantage in life. They will grow up with no moral principles, no notion of proper conduct and the inability to think. Children are our most valuable natural resource. Deprive them of an education and you have dug the grave of the country.

Our current crop of presidentiables has been adept at saying they will focus on education, but we continue to miss the concrete details of their “plans.” Our education system is in need of an overhaul: we need more schools and qualified teachers. We not only need textbooks, but text books that are not error-ridden. Some news reports have indicated that there are over 500 errors in some textbooks. Not only are we failing to educate our children, but some of them are also receiving a poor education. In this respect, our curriculum also needs to be studied and changed to reflect the new realities of the global world. Education is not only skills-acquisition.

Education is the first and last solution to the problems of freedom and progress. In 1997 we wrote: “Education is making citizens. It is through education that ordinary people develop extraordinary possibilities. It is only education that can create the conditions for full development of each and every individual. And it is only through education that the soul of our people can pass from one generation to the next.” –Alejandro R. Roces (The Philippine Star)