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Friday, June 23, 2006
Nilles: Exporting Filipino excellence abroad
By Giovanni A. Nilles
Open Sentence
WE HAVE been exporting excellent skilled laborers for decades abroad. Over the years, too, we have seen a considerable shift in the trainings the educational system gave to our students.
Notice, for instance, the campaign for vocational studies - that sort of diploma that you can get in six months to two years before applying for work abroad to earn dollars.
While many families can afford to send their students to schools that offer excellent training, millions more are contented to take on courses that would offer a quick buck.
Modern-age heroes, the government calls them. Never mind that one works as a domestic helper in Singapore, a factory worker in Taiwan, a japayuki in Japan, a private army in Iran or worse, a bandit in Africa, for as long as they can send home that much-needed US dollars. Others even married males that are old enough to become their great grandfather just so they could get out of the country and its seeming eternal economic woes.
As the country plunges deeper and deeper down the drain, we kept on losing our best men and women to work on even the most-insulting jobs abroad. On more than one occasion, the jobs cost them their lives.
Over a period of five years, the Philippines will receive $200 million dollars or a little over P1.5 billion from the World Bank to redo our educational system.
Finally, we can heave a sigh of relief after an international mega agency begins to pound on the country's lopsided regard of the need for good education and academic excellence.
This time, perhaps, we can focus on the development of the science, math and english skills of our students rather than on developing their muscles.
The Education department too can take a second look into what it is doing with the number of hours that a student spent in a classroom nowadays.
In many urban centers, students get to school in only four or five hours a day as the afternoon shift occupies the same classroom that the morning session students are using.
In these places, high school students have the option to take on the morning, afternoon and night class sessions while those in the elementary can opt for the morning and afternoon shifts.
What do these students do in their spare time? Watch cartoons or telenovelas on TV? Ask them about Panday or Captain Barbell and they will probably be able to give a perfect answer.
The Department has indeed a lot of work to do in improving our educational system.
It could also take a look into the effectiveness of the special science classes, which are given only to the top students of each urban school.
If these are found to be effective in improving the academic excellence of both elementary and secondary students then it should, by all means, be expanded.
(June 23, 2006 issue)
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