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Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Roperos: Cycle of mediocrity
By Godofredo M. Roperos
Politics Also
NOW come the examiners of the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) seeking to review “its system of examination for teachers following a 70 percent failing rate in the tests given last August.” And well they ought to, given such highly discouraging, if not gravely disparaging, results. How can we expect to have a higher quality of educated young Filipinos if their teachers are even unable to hurdle the test of their professional capability?
But a more significant question to ask is who is to blame for the results?
Truth is, I have the uncanny feeling that our educational system has somehow fallen into a sort of rut. And it has gotten entangled in a cycle of mediocrity owing, not so much due to the absence of mental skill of students as it is to the lack of competence of their teachers. With such a scenario, it is easy to picture a scene where public school students are caught in a cycle of mediocrity, starting with teachers who are unable to instruct their wards effectively because they did not receive deep enough training.
This brings us to the plan of the PRC to change the format of the test question of the licensure examination. It seems that the questions were presented in a multiple choice format, which the examinees may have found difficult to tackle. The multiple choice questions challenge the reasoning power of the examinee, in the sense that the correct choice may differ only from the others in the matter of perception and analytical reasoning.
This is why when I taught mass communication and political science at the University of San Jose-Recolletos many years ago, I favored the essay type questions for my exams believing that it would get the students to think out carefully and express their thoughts in detail, unlike in the so-called objective type when the students are noticed to memorize single word or phrase answers. The PRC chair believes “practical examinations is the best way to gauge an education graduates’ teaching skills.”
The PRC said there were 119,000 education graduates who took the Licensure Examination for Teachers last August. But some 83,000 or 70 percent failed. The high percentage of those who failed is a sad and distressing commentary on the quality of education prevailing in the country at the moment. It is difficult to countenance that such crop of potential mentors with poor showing would eventually be let loose among our country’s young learners who need all the intellectual nourishment they can have.
There is good reason for us to presume that those who passed the previous LETs were just perhaps a little better than the last batch of participant. If so, what can we expect from our students?
The new education secretary, indeed, has a great challenge before him. Teachers may not have the kind of education they need in order to be able to imbue their wards in the primary and secondary levels with the kind of learning that would make them cope with the demands of a changing norm of life in the first decade of the 21st century. But their level of learning and intellectual capability can be enriched — should in fact be enriched — in order to make them competent mentors.
This is the challenge Education Secretary Florencio Abad must face, and undertake. Teachers now teaching in the countryside should be extended the opportunity to enrich their knowledge as often as possible.
We offer this thought to our school authorities for the sake of our growing children whose young minds now are slowly being molded by mentors whose training was ensnared in a cycle of mediocrity.
(November 23, 2004 issue)
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