Saturday, October 26, 2013

HIGH-QUALITY LOCAL TEXTBOOKS FOR FILIPINO SCHOOLCHILDREN: WHERE ARE THEY P-NOY?

Hey, I must say the National Conference on Research in Teacher Education (19-21 Oct.) was a successful gathering of educationists from different regions of the country and other parts of the world. I was part of the panel discussion this morning and Philippine basic education was the center of everyone's academic curiosity. Well, it's obvious that the country's basic education suffer from many "diseases." It's kind of awkward to be saying this in the presence of our foreign guests, but it's just difficult to talk about solutions when we don't honestly articulate our problems. We have many problems in education, all right, but I'll identify only three in this post and these are the following: (1) outdated or questionable curriculum; (2) poor teacher preparation; and (3) lack of high-quality (or model) textbooks from K to 10/12. Of these three problems, the easiest to fix is the curriculum, but then, a beautiful curriculum would amount to nothing if teacher preparation program in the country remains wanting in form and substance. This means, of course, that professors of teacher education and training should actively help in addressing the teacher prep problem. Now, of the three problems that I have identified, common sense tells us, and we know this already since the day Moses was born, that the most difficult problem to solve is teacher prep. It will take years before we could solve this problem as it takes time before a nation could produce highly competent teachers. Read how highly competent teachers are made in Finland, and we shall be on the same page on this matter. Because a beautiful curriculum is just a bunch of words in the wind without a huge army of good schoolteachers, I'm currently more interested in the production of high-quality local textbooks from K to 12. I'll take the risk of saying that we have none of these yet. Having good textbooks could help us lessen the impact of teacher prep problem on the learning and education of young Filipinos. Sad to say, we can't seem to pull out, at this point, any one basic education textbook that could withstand rigorous criticism. Ok, but if you know one exists, show it first to me.

I'd turn green with envy each time I open a ministry-accredited Singapore math textbook because, indeed, any student who could read, write, and think could effectively learn from it even when the teacher is not around. We don't have anything like those Singapore textbooks, both in math and in other areas of study. It's really disappointing to see that in our country one government administration after another did not seem to use the taxpayer's money to finance the writing and printing of high-quality (i.e., model) textbooks in various areas of education (i.e., science, math, values education, art education, physical education, etc.). Of course, highly-educated parents, private tutors, and other stakeholders should likewise be consulted before proposed textbooks are printed or distributed. For these stakeholders, especially parents, have many legitimate issues over the way textbooks are written. For example, a six-page reading text on people of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao is too long for a grade 2 to process everything that he/she is expected to learn in one sitting. Also, some books in values education would instruct students to indicate whether "Honesty is the best policy" is true or false when this statement is neither true nor false, i.e., it's a non-cognitive statement. I need not go to any school of book writing in order to know that this is not the way to write books for little children whom we expect to develop a passion for reading and learning. If books are written this way from grades 1 to 6, most of our elementary school graduates will, probably, never find it fun to read. Badly written textbooks, that is to say, would just burn our young ones out long before they enter college. I haven't done any study on this, but I'm tempted to think that badly written books could be one of the reasons why many Filipino teenagers do not seem to have a passion for reading, much less writing.

My recent advocacy is the production of high-quality textbooks for the young Filipinos because if we have good textbooks to offer in public and private schools, a huge part of our problem could be solved even if our teacher prep and basic education curriculum, at this point, are far from ideal.

Let's not forget that financing, using the taxpayer's money, the writing and printing of badly written textbooks is reprehensible as these textbooks will be distributed to millions of public schoolchildren whom, we know, are not yet fully equipped to sanitize or question what the badly written textbooks will preach and many ill-equipped teachers will unwittingly teach. I therefore suggest that all textbooks for public schoolchildren should be subjected to rigorous public scrutiny before WE, THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, THE GOVERNMENT, i.e., not just the select few, decide whether such books are worth using in elementary and high school. By public scrutiny, I mean, parents, even students, columnists, university professors, tutors, school administrators, and other stakeholders in education should be GENUINELY consulted by the administration running the government before textbooks are purchased using the taxpayers' money.

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