How Congress and local government can reverse our failure to meet UNMDG 2 and 5

(Part 1 of a series)

Out of 192 UNESCO member states 189 countries signed the UNMDG 2000-2015 (United Nations Millennium Development Goals) identifying the major global development challenges of PEACE, SECURITY and DEVELOPMENT. The eight goals are: (1) Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; (2) Achieve universal primary education; (3) Promote gender equality and empower women; (4) Reduce child mortality; (5) Improve maternal health; (6) Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; (7) Ensure environmental sustainability; and (8) Develop a global partnership for development.

In the latest EFA Global Monitoring Report, the Philippines is foreseen to fail in meeting UNMDG goals 2 (achieving universal primary education) and 5 (improving maternal health).

Philippine Senate-Congress responds to EFA with 1990 EDCOM survey of Philippine schools

To eradicate poverty caused by global illiteracy, UNESCO summoned all the member states specifically the developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to develop their Education for All (EFA) programs in the school system particularly on the basic level of elementary and secondary schools.

In response, then Senator Edgardo Angara and Congressman Carlos Padilla put together a joint commission of the Senate and Congress to survey all schools (preschools, elementary and high schools, technical vocational schools, colleges, and universities) in all the 17 regions of the Philippines. Labeled EDCOM 1990 – technical working groups (TWG) for each school classification accompanied the EDCOM senators and congressmen to investigate the national situation. (I was a member of the Early Childhood Education TWG.) Such a comprehensive study had not been done for decades since the Philippines gained independence in 1946.

The findings were dismal. Senator Angara summarized this in a book entitled, A Nation in Crisis, stating: first – 40 percent first graders drop out in the middle of the school year. This has caused a yearly increase of adult illiterates; second – ECE was not available to majority of the poor young children; third – the curriculum is irrelevant causing substandard teacher training.

The fourth and fifth elements reveal why our educational system has failed. Fourth – Weakened principalship. Congress had legislated the dual task of administrator and academic supervision to the principals. This would spell failure in project management. As a result, the principals were forced to spend more time looking after building repairs, faulty plumbing and proper sanitation of the school environment. Former DepEd Secretary Jesli Lapus exclaimed, “I am helpless and frustrated. Maintenance is missing in the school budget.”

Fifth – Lack of monitoring and evaluation. The system of regular monitoring and gauging the quality of the school environment, educational facilities, the principals and the teachers did not exist. A yearly awareness of the handicaps taken seriously would have allowed corrections and remedies so that all this would have been strengthened and perfected.

1990 Convention on the Rights of the Child

Who is responsible for the care of children? The first 40 articles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) provides childhood years from birth to adolescence, the right to quality upbringing at home, quality schooling and for older children to express their opinion, as well as protect the child from being exploited in labor, prostitution and war conflicts.

The CRC panel of judges in Geneva was impressed by 400 laws that are supposed to protect the Filipino child. Corazon Alma de Leon headed the Philippine delegation then, DECS USec Linda Pefianco, DSWD Director Lourdes Bolanon, DOJ Atty. Merceditas Gutierrez, Justice Leonor Ines Luciano, Nina Yuson of Museo Pambata, and me representing the NGO sector. USec Pefianco commented that most of our childhood laws have not been implemented including a separate Court for Juveniles and proper registration of newly born babies.

Has EDCOM recommendation been fulfilled 20 years after?

When President Corazon Aquino appointed Dr. Lourdes Quisumbing MECS (Ministry of Education Culture and Sports) Secretary in 1986, Dr. Quisumbing created a legacy in our national education by promulgating DECS Order 87 establishing the Council for Early Childhood Education of the Philippines (CONCEP). Members were Lily Canlas (Jesu-Mariae School), Emmy Garon (Golden Values), Precious Pimentel (Miriam College), Florinda Lesaca (Association of Childhood Education International), Miriam Covar and Cynthia Valdevilla (University of the Philippines), Nina Yuson (Museo Pambata) and me representing Operation Brotherhood Montessori Center.

Four national conventions were held to consult preschool educators. Monthly meetings at DECS Division of Bureau Elementary Education headed by Dr. Nita Guerrero, together with Edith Carpio, Dr. Celina Miguel, and Lidinila Santos were held to refine new guidelines on how to organize new preschools. The reference book, “Planning the Young Child’s Education” was published.

Jess Palma was our consultant to prepare an ECE accrediting body. This led to lobbying in Congress to institutionalize ECE for all children. The ECE law was finally passed in 2000.

The institutional culture of DepEd will need to change

The Basic Education Sector Reform Agenda or BESRA was drafted in 2006, a product of in-depth discussions with the country’s brightest minds coupled with intensive research and consultations with education stakeholders and interest groups. It seeks to “create a basic education sector that is capable of attaining the country’s Education for All Objectives by the year 2015.”

Butch Hernandez of the Philippine Daily Inquirer stated in his article, BESRA: The Promise of Redemption (March 5, 2010), “Finally, BESRA explicitly acknowledges that the institutional culture of the Department of Education will need to change, and that it ‘will need to move out of its worst centralized, bureaucratized, mechanistic and simplistic mindsets and habits if it hopes to attain population-wide higher level learning outcomes.’ Truly, BESRA is Philippine education’s promise of redemption. It is also a promise that has so far remained unkept.”

What about the reform of Basic Education Curriculum and Teacher Training? EDCOM concluded that with an enormous population that increases every year, a single agency – DECS could not cope to fulfill the CRC obligations of the government. Consequently, it was changed to DepEd as the sole institution to look after Basic Education including preschool for five-year old children, while TESDA (Technical Education and Skills Development Authority) would take charge of all vocational schools, and CHED (Commission on Higher Education) would look after tertiary education.

The educational revolution that will develop the self-sustaining citizens

Through its Social and Human Science (SHS) mandate, UNESCO aspires to advance knowledge, standards and intellectual cooperation in order to facilitate social transformations conducive to the universal values of justice, freedom and human dignity. In the Philippines, the SHS sector-committee of the UNESCO National Commission pursued efforts to enrich the teaching of Social Sciences, specifically of Social Studies in basic education, to help address the needs of the 21st century “knowledge society”.

The traditional concept of the subject’s syllabus is made up of fragmentary facts on geography, history, cultural landmarks and governance that require the students to memorize. Their knowledge is evaluated by regular quizzes or quarterly exams, through various methods such as “fill in the blanks”, “underline the correct word”, and “true or false”, etc. But the students fail to see the overall significance of Social Studies in their lives.

For the past decade, the SHS committee has urged the Department of Education to make the Makabayan Social Studies subject the official entry point for social sciences in the basic education curriculum, and to make each Filipino child able to critically comprehend questions such as: “Who are we? Where do we live? What are the physical, natural, and cultural aspects of our country? How do we relate to the whole Asia Pacific region and the world? What is our moral obligation to conserve our God-given assets?”

Transforming the educational  system to develop the new Filipinos

The Philippines today is privileged to have the Southeast Asian Center for Lifelong Learning for Sustainable Development (SEA-CLLSD). Approved as a Category 2 Center under the auspices of UNESCO, it seeks to transform conventional education to focus on a person’s natural self-sufficiency from “cradle to grave”. The Center will help redirect teacher training and the curriculum to condition students to understand the Cosmic Organization centered around the human being. To stir the intelligence with the flame of imagination, lessons such as the four blankets of Planet Earth: land (lithosphere), water (hydrosphere), air (atmosphere) and life in each sphere (biosphere) are presented. This refers to the UNESCO program of Man and the Biosphere (MAB).

For mankind to survive, it is duty-bound to conserve the biosphere for this is the source of its food, clothing, and shelter. The CLLSD envisions the “emergence of the NEW MAN who will no longer be a victim of events, but thanks to his clarity of vision will be able to direct and mold the future of mankind.” (Education for Life, Dr. Maria Montessori) –Preciosa S. Soliven (The Philippine Star)

(Next Week: Reversing the Trend of Maternal and Infant Mortality, Part 2)