IT SEEMS like just a few weeks ago, we were celebrating Christmas and now, we are into Lent season and the month of March. It seems that time flies so swiftly these days. What makes time fly so fast?
Parents of children in Grade 10 are not so happy with the new school system. They have to endure another two years before they could call their children as full-fledged college students. Their children would still undergo Grades 11 and Twelve or Senior High School before they could go to college and pursue career training. But since time flies swiftly, it is just a matter of two years.
But let us look at the relevance and significance of the Expanded Basic Education program in the country. First, it starts with the kinder years, where students before going to grade 1 must undergo the pre-school training which is now mandatory. This is also known as early childhood education. This is where the child's social growth and development are being taught. In the old curricular system, this was equivalent to day-care, kinder and prep all rolled into one.
Ideally, by the time the child enters grade 1, he should at least know how to read and write. He must already be knowledgeable of the basic arithmetic. The grade one teacher must be there to enhance the child's communication skills using the mother tongue. This would run until the child reaches grade 3. He can fully comprehend general ideas of communication, Mathematics, reading and writing for these were taught in the mother tongue. In reality, this is far from being executed in our schools. Many schools are still having the old collar for the new dog. The new collar is set aside. In short, the reality is that when the child reaches grade three, he still has the same abilities as the grade 3 pupil in the old curriculum.
The ideal K to 12 child enters the intermediate level (Grades 4-6). Here he starts universally learning the concepts. The mother tongue is now replaced by the "Big Brother's tongue". The child now enters a new world, where his micro-world will now enter the mega-world. He opens his mind to the alien world and is invited to forget his world. He is now invited to do higher communication, mathematics and writing effectively. He is introduced to worlds that he will be facing in the future. Back to reality, the intermediate level is still the same. The child is still inside the classroom having a hard time learning the complex pronunciations of the alien language. As he progresses, he embraces the foreign language as his first language and the first language as a foreign language to him at school. He is forced to speak English under penalty. Then he finishes his grade school years. He receives a sash, framed diploma, he covers his new dress under a toga and looks proudly at everyone having finished the first six chapters of his life. If he is lucky, he is made to deliver a speech, which he and his classmates do not understand.
The child heads to high school and as Grade 7, he now is the youngest in the community. From being a grown and responsible pupil of grade six, here, they will be treated like babies. A year or so of review of the things taken up in grade school and then after a year, they will be bombarded with a lot of data that they will either memorize or vomit away. Remember the thick and expensive textbooks in Chemistry and Physics. In Junior High School, the child is led to careers. The role of the teacher is to identify the abilities, talents, and capacity to embrace a certain career or he offers the child an alternative.
In grades 11 and 12, the child ideally picks his choice from the offered strands. This will prepare him already for the rigorous training and mastering of his craft in college. Colleges should and must only accept students who have been properly prepared for their careers. However, this remains on paper for even the college curriculum is still in its experimental stage.
When will this end? We have to note that time flies and we cannot rewind the lives of the young people that we have destroyed because of our inabilities to make up our minds.
St. Thomas of Villanova, pray for us.