Forum discusses classroom woes

FILMMAKING was Rowella Mae Yurag’s favorite course when she was still a communication student at the Cebu Normal University (CNU) and she also dreamed of becoming a television reporter.

After she graduated last March, she did not pursue her ambition. She now writes press releases for a placement agency.

“Nag-think ko in advance sa mga ‘what ifs’. Like, what if di nako ma-accomplish akong job ug what if ma-fail nako ang media people?” said the 20-year-old marketing assistant through Facebook.

Even though she had teachers who were also practicing journalists, Yurag felt she didn’t learn the skills she needed to become a broadcast journalist.

“Wa gyud ko totally natagbaw. Wa man guy facilities, which are of great help gyud sa students para ma-apply ang mga theories nga gi-teach,” she said. “Wala sad nako makat-oni sa school ang unsaon to be patient with the real world, because school is way too different from the real world.”

For veteran journalist and educator Yvonne Chua, there should be a blend of academics and practitioners inside a faculty room.

Theories

The academics, she said, teach about the theories, while the practitioners take care of the professional skills, like news gathering and writing.

Chua is a member of the Commission on Higher Education(Ched)-Technical Committee on Journalism. She teaches in the University of the Philippines in Diliman.

She was one of the speakers during the 19th Cebu Press Freedom forum, “Ensuring Synergy: A Dialogue between the Academe and the Cebu Media Industry,” which was attended by editors, reporters, mass communication teachers and students yesterday.

Chua said journalism programs in schools today have several problems. One is that the curriculum is outdated.

Majority of the schools, she said, still use the 1997 curriculum that is print-oriented.

Ched approved in 2010 to revise the old program by using international standards like the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (Unesco) “model curricula for journalism education.”

Curricula

The proposed curricula, according to Unesco’s website, is a “generic model that can be adapted according to each country’s specific needs. It takes full cognizance of the social, economic, political and cultural contexts of developing countries and emerging democracies, highlighting the connection between democracy and journalism and arguing for a more cross-disciplinary approach within journalism training centers.”

In December 2005, Unesco convened experts in Paris for a consultation. The project was completed two years later.

Journalism education reportedly faces serious challenges in Southeast Asia where all countries are rated by the human rights watchdog, Freedom House, as either partly free or totally not free, according to the Unesco National Commission of the Philippines.

The Unesco report further states that the 2008 World Audit on Press Freedom cited the Philippine media with the highest ranking at 62, while Laos’ media was tagged the least free with 136 ranking.

For her part, Sun.Star Cebu editor-in-chief Isolde Amante shared her personal assessment of the skills of journalism interns and graduates.

She said some interns “turn up cold” when she asks them if they have any story ideas they wanted to chase.

She suggested to teachers to let their students do field work like getting public documents from government offices.

“Most of the young writers who come to us, their grasp of the language isn’t really very confident,” she said. “There is also a tendency to be a little verbose, which we understand because when we were young we went through that stage.”