Friday, January 04, 2008 Editorials: Strengthening education in 2008
LOCAL education officials claimed, after about a week’s visit to three Asean member countries, that the Philippine educational system is equal if not much ahead of the said nations.
But even if there is a measure of truth in their claim, the difference may just be in the matter of program content, or in service delivery but not in the quality of the results, or the excellence of the graduates.
In fact, it should not be just a matter of singular pride that our level of public education is much better and way ahead of those of our neighbor countries.
High standard
We must admit that more than half a century ago, we learned more fully the basics of western learning, and spoke with more facility the English language than any of our Asian neighbors.
We had far more advanced foundation in formal education.
There was a time when Filipino students graduating from seventh grade of the elementary level were taken in as primary school teachers in elementary schools.
The immediate employment of fresh graduates became the rule in the nation’s fledgling educational system.
The quality of the graduates indicated the standard of education they trained in, something maintained through the decades of American management and tutelage of Philippine schools.
The decline
It was during the postwar years, when the nationalist movement in the country became intense and took an anti-American shade, that the educational system was sort of “Filipinized” and the demand for a so-called national language asserted itself in the nation’s politics.
Thus, with Congress dominated by members from Luzon, Tagalog was made the foundation of the national language.
And asserting then that the Filipinos were a people in search of their own identity, Congress agreed that the national language should be made medium of instruction in all public schools.
Thus did politics and our politicians “reformed” our educational system.
Then began the decline of the Filipinos’ facility to speak the English language.
Ironically, this did not generate a proportionate rise in nationalist fervor of the Filipino citizenry, proving that nationalism is a matter of the heart and the mind, not a matter of language; a matter of values and virtues, not a question of politics or loyalty to a language.
