IT must be incredible difficult to be a parent during this pandemic.
Pre-Covid, mommies and daddies went about their busy lives, working to get enough food on the table, sheltering their kids with a roof over their heads, and, on occasion, helping them with their assignments to enable the latter to succeed in their school work and move on to the next grade.
Parents at least had a modicum of confidence that whatever tuition they were paying for their children’s education, they would get their money’s worth. And with the teachers acting as surrogate parents, their kids would grow up to be the smart cherubs they believed their kids have been all along. Ahem.
These Covid-19 days, with kids stuck at home, and having to grapple with blended learning sessions, amid faltering Internet connections (Hello, Smart! Hello, PLDT! Hello, Globe! Hello, Converge! Hello, Sky!), parents are finally realizing the pitfalls of relying on our schools too much, without the close supervision their kids have actually needed.
Since school year 2020-2021 began, a few self-learning modules (SLMs), which supposedly had the imprimatur of the Department of Education, have been found to be wanting in sense, reasoning, and well…education. Our Facebook and Twitter news feeds have been inundated by screenshots of what exactly the kids are being fed in school.
In one example, which scandalized even celebrity singer Lea Salonga she had to post it to her social-media accounts, an owl was labeled as an ostrich. And while grammatical errors have been found in many work books pre-Covid, which sent netizens a-tittering, the slew of mistakes recently discovered in these SLMs were so glaring, even news outlets wouldn’t let up in pointing these out and seeking comments from the DepEd. (E.g. “Tagaytay City is known for wonderful picturesque of the majestic Mount Taal…”)
Not to mention, errors in mathematic equations; frankly I’m not even our family’s Math genius but even I know how to solve for “x”—and it will not give you “zero” by dividing 2x by zero, then cross multiplying with zero/zero. Haller! Dr. Sheldon Cooper would throw a fit at this!
Film director Jose Javier Reyes was so shocked about an SLM module of his friend’s niece. It was supposed to teach Filipino to kids by using hugot lines from movies, and asking them to identify which film characters uttered these. Reyes, who is also a university professor, said in his post: “I am not only disgusted but infuriated and demoralized by the educational standards being shown to Filipino students. How can we develop a nation of critical thinkers whereas some of those who were given the responsibility of shaping the minds of the young are in dire need of brains and even dedication to their work as well? Thus today I have concocted a new term: ‘EDIOTS.’ Idiots in Education.”
In a way, this Covid-19 could be a “blessing in the sky”—I’m betting an SLM would probably include that Filipinized joke, instead of the correct idiomatic expression “blessing in disguise”—because it’s made parents check up on what exactly their angels are being taught, especially on DepEd’s livestreamed school sessions and approved workbooks.
And yet, this should really not come as a surprise. We’ve seen the signs but chose to ignore them.
In my one trimester of teaching at a university, I had a few students from popular exclusive Catholic schools for girls and boys who could not write grammatically correct sentences on their test papers to save their overprivileged lives. And this was in the late 1980s. So can you imagine the kind of education the kids are receiving these days?!
Privately schooled children will probably manage to get by in the real world once they graduate, what with the social connections of their parents, but what of those studying in public institutions and using these poorly conceptualized learning materials?
What can we do though? There have been droves of competent teachers, dissatisfied by the inequitable salaries they receive here, leaving the country and trying their luck abroad, educating foreign students. Or worse, have become househelp or nannies taking care of other people’s kids.
Many in my generation work in private companies, or have become lawyers and doctors, or are working abroad in various occupations and professions. Among the X’ennials and millennials, a lot of them are in the business-process outsourcing field, either as supervisors or call center agents (if fresh graduates).
Many of us work at jobs which pay more than teaching, so who are we expecting to educate children today? Or make learning materials for private and public school pupils? The Avengers?
I don’t mean to demean our current crop of teachers. For sure, many of them wouldn’t stay in the profession if they didn’t have some measure of devotion to, love even for their schools and the kids they teach. I’ve read the stories, I’ve watched the news features on TV…public school teachers, for instance, have hardly enough time on their hands to create their daily lesson plans, teach and take questions from what? 50-60 students, and make do with their blinking Internet connection at that. I doubt their salaries have been increased despite teaching online classes, which is exhausting believe me. Say what you will about the efficiency of WFH, and while attending webinars and online pressers may seem “easier” for journalists such as myself who have co-morbidities—in my case, asthma— the computer can just suck the life and energy out of a person. Even if you use a 100 blue-light filters to your screen. (There must be a study to explain why this is so.)
The only way we can stop the erosion in quality of the country’s educational system is for more of the intellectually bent to become teachers. Or at least help in crafting or editing these SLMs. (Volunteers, anyone?) We also should advocate for higher salaries for our country’s teachers and for budgets to fund their higher studies so they, too, can improve their skills and competence.
These are not impossible goals. But we need to work at this now, if we are to have a better future as a nation. Imagine a future president in Malacañang who can’t even spell “fuchsia”? Or, for heaven’s sake, do fractions?!