In previous administrations, for decades the problems faced by the Department of Education (DepEd) had come like clockwork. The public could almost set their calendar based on its regularity. There were very little variations save for the calendar year.

Perpetually short of funds despite constitutional priorities, classroom shortage was a constant curse. Moreover, public-school officials snuck in and charged incremental fees, effectively bloating the cost of education despite statutory limits.

Perhaps its most institutionally heartrending involves the perennially unsung. Simply look at the government pension fund’s largest constituency. Public-school teachers are perpetually victimized—hailed as heroes but treated like shit.

When Education Secretary Jesli Lapus took the problematic portfolio there were below-the-line initiatives he prioritized. These profoundly altered the polemic paradigm. He tapped non-traditional sources of capital, infusing strategic partnerships with the private sector where surpluses were re-channeled to a sector long anemic from neglect.

Adopt-a-school programs and corporate involvement effectively increased capital bases, especially helpful where the economy was running historic deficits.

From reducing teaching hours to effective levels, to creating a mechanism to address teachers’ benefits and loans, to securing substantial increases in budget allocations, Lapus’s unique programs for administrator training likewise reduced the need to augment operational revenues, instilling both efficiencies and skills for viable school management. More important, teacher training increased economic resiliencies, restoring a good deal of lost dignities. The result was a department that registered huge advances in student achievement tests where long-festering resource gaps in classrooms, teacher and principal items, textbooks and teacher training narrowed considerably.

The unintended result was a department with the highest approval rating and ranking the least corrupt, its leadership, most valued, the highest performer, several times recognized as outstanding and popularly loved.

Unfortunately, pungent lies and brickbats now come in a variety of sinister shapes and political permutations, undiscerning, targeting anyone for as long as they serve during Arroyo’s watch. Like clockwork at budget deliberations time, the creepy crawl from the woodwork, stirring from underneath rotted compost. The previous accusations on textbook content were timed to coincide with new textbook purchases. The so-called noodle controversy compared especially formulated and packaged food with incomparable off-the-shelf products.

Now, the DepEd’s health initiatives are being targeted. Lice and heady lies share more than acoustic echoes. The onomatopoeia is more than auditory apropos. In the current citronella- shampoo issue slandered against the DepEd, arraying lies against facts, we see that what non-discerning puffed-up polemic pervades promptly goes phffft.

To respond to the issues is a matter of lining up ducks. One congressman said the issue is one of process. Clawing up from beneath the briny bucket, the solon, citing “transparency and irregularity in the agency’s bidding process” declared “the price may be right but the process isn’t.”

This is especially paradoxical against a rare, significant and noteworthy World Bank commendation that the DepEd’s procurement programs are recognized as “Best Practices” and are currently replicated in the region and in Europe.

He claimed in 2007, the DepEd sought bidders for 150,000 sachets of shampoo for P900,000. In a 2008 rebid, ceteris paribus, he noted the number was reduced but peso amounts were not. Failing to analyze requisite differentials leading to the 2008 rebid, he screamed bloody murder. Never mind that the first failed when no one submitted bid proposals. And never mind that the DepEd needed to respond to cost realities and had to revise to draw in bidders.

So now it’s the process? The verifiable and Commission on Audit-checked record shows that the DepEd adhered to the statutory process of Republic Act 9184 and its implementing rules and regulations to the letter up to the point of complying with Bureau of Food and Drug standards.

The same critic claimed that in the rebid on August 22, 2008, “the number of citronella shampoo to be procured was changed from 500 to 75 sets still with the same allocation of P1 million.”

When foraying into educational issues, is it too much to ask critics to first educate themselves? These figures are incorrect and refer to oto-opthalmoscopes for auditory and visual disability examinations and not to pediculosis-effective shampoo. There is a difference.

Just as there are differences between commercially available shampoos and those specified by the DepEd.

Where’s the irregularity? Where’s the non-transparency? If there’s any, to mindlessly attack government agencies, it is an infestation of lies and not lice. Intellectual integrity is integral to righteous criticism. Some people need to wash not just their hair but the dirt inside their heads.