A lawmaker on Monday questioned several “errors” in Department of Education’s (DepEd) learning materials, including the use of a vulgar word in distance learning module.
Following a hearing of the House Committee on Public Accounts, ACT-CIS Rep. Jocelyn Tulfo said these errors in learning modules are clearly not just isolated incidents.
“The sheer volume of mistakes and lapses discovered and exposed despite snail-paced Internet is enough proof of the low quality of teacher education, of in-service training, quality assurance, and educational management in many of our public schools, schools divisions, and schools regions,” Tulfo said.
“Making matters worse is the lack of admission by the Department of Education top hierarchy, regional directors, superintendents, supervisors, and principals that the pandemic has exposed serious flaws, not mere mistakes. They are in denial and public apologies are either slow or sugar-coated,” she added.
In the same hearing, Education Undersecretary Diosdado San Antonio said the DepEd has found a total of 155 errors in its learning materials used from October 2020 to June 2021.
He said majority of the errors were found in locally developed learning materials, which came from its regional offices, while some errors came from privately developed material, DepEd text book, Deped TV, and from unknown sources.
“When we validated these errors from unknown sources [which were posted on social media] they have not been found to be used in the Department of Education,” he added.
In the hearing, Antonio Calipjo-Go, a resource person, showed to lawmakers a vulgar word that was found in one of the learning materials for Grade 10 students in Pampanga.
Education Undersecretary Tonisito Umali told the committee that the “vulgar word” error is unacceptable.
He also assured lawmakers that the module has already been recalled in February.
Moreover, Tulfo said the government cannot keep students at home for too long saying, “these situations must end soon.”
“We cannot have another school year of this. We must not. Remote learning has pushed our homes to the limits of what they can endure by being together all the time at home. Though home is truly the first school, it cannot be the only school because the entire world outside those homes is the real school. The home is a nest but time must come for everyone in that nest to venture out into the world while still have the nest to come home to,” she added.
Earlier, Bohol Rep. Kristine Alexie B. Tutor filed the proposed “Educational Textbooks Accuracy and Veracity Act,” which seeks to improve the system and process that produces the country’s textbooks for basic education to ensure the distribution of quality textbooks sans the inaccuracies, factual errors, and lapses.
Tutor said her bill “empowers the National Book Development Board to issue specific rules and regulations on educational textbook publishing,” to include: (1) the imposition of administrative penalties; (2) standards and procedures on reviewing textbooks and manuscripts; and (3) mechanisms for the correction of content as regards factual errors, inaccuracies, and flaws, but excluding editorial style.
Image credits: Bernard Testa