DRAFT

COMMENTARY

From Fallacy to FearPERSONAL MEDITATIONS ON THE K-12 PROGRAM

BY CARLOS VALARAO

The premise, we all know, is simple. Philippine basic education is in dire straits because it is hindered by its short 10-year cycle. This argument is further reinforced by emphasizing the fact that we are one of only three among all 155 Unesco member nations with such a 10-year cycle (the other two being Angola and Djibouti), with the rest having adopted longer basic education cycles, including what some refer to as a 12-year “standard.” Thus, the government is now pushing for what it calls the K-12 Program, which will make basic ed in this country a 13-year cycle, beginning with mandatory Kindergarten and ending with Grade 12.

I am one of the few who openly question the wisdom of this proposal. And while I know many of its proponents to be intelligent, knowledgeable and well-meaning individuals, I am willing to go out on a limb by saying that I disagree with them on this one. At the very least, I am in search of answers to my apprehensions, answers that perhaps the various K-12 proponents and supporters—both in and out of DepEd—can explain to me and the broader public.

APPEAL TO AUTHORITY

Simply because people in power or authority are for this, it doesn’t mean it’s good. So while I continue to have a high opinion of most of these influential interest groups and individuals—whether it be President Noynoy Aquino, Education Secretary Armin Luistro, and education sector heavyweights like some of my former DepEd bosses, colleagues and friends—it doesn’t mean that their espousal of the proposed 13-year basic ed cycle should automatically merit our support for K-12.

ARGUMENTUM AD POPULUM

Simply because many people believe this K-12 proposal to be a good one—whether or not they have their facts straight—doesn’t make it good either. So even while I recognize the importance of gaining public support for the program (and, as a communications professional, I recognize the need for a competent social marketing effort to make this possible), public support doesn’t make the

1

DRAFT

program any more sensible (and government shouldn’t use social marketing to promote bad programs!).

POST HOC ERGO PROPTER HOC

To my mind, the most fundamental fallacy of the K-12 proposition is one of coincidental correlation—simply because one thing happened before another, it doesn’t mean the former caused the latter. In this case, simply because we have a shorter basic education cycle, it doesn’t mean it’s the reason for the poor performance of our entire education system and our schools.

Indeed, this may very well be a case of causal oversimplification—the fallacy of the single cause—which tells us that even if we do identify one cause of an outcome, we must not assume it to be the only cause since, in actuality, there may be several other causes that must be considered to be responsible for that outcome. In this case, even if we assume that the “short” 10-year cycle is a factor, we must not infer it to be the only factor, since there are so many others that can contribute to the dire situation we are in.

Sadly, the whole 10-year cycle issue has been gradually transformed into folk wisdom through time. A lot of people actually believe it to be the real problem and, inevitably, they conclude that by simply adding a few more years to the cycle, we can already solve the crisis in education (or, to be more precise, they think this to be the most consequential response to the crisis).

But I always say that we are overlooking two important issues, which, most likely, are even more significant—our limited resources for education and our lack of competence to perform well. And the focus should therefore be on these two issues.

Our ridiculously large student population prevents our Third World economy from providing decent educational services—no matter how hard we try. With over 22 million children being provided free elementary and secondary education in our public schools (roughly five times the entire population of countries like Singapore, New Zealand and Brunei Darussalam), and almost half of all private high school students being subsidized by government through GASTPE, our per capita spending for education is extremely low. (In 2005, for instance, we spent less than P 7,000 for each student, while Thailand and Malaysia spent the equivalent of P 47,700 and P 56,840, respectively; the United States and New Zealand spent the equivalent of P 123,200 for each student while Japan spent a mind-blowing P 293,440) It is therefore important for us to recognize our underinvestment in education as crucial—that even if we double or triple the Department of Education’s budget, it’ll still be extremely

2

DRAFT

difficult for us to catch up with the rest of the world in terms of delivering quality services.

Thus, adding more years to the basic education cycle may set us several steps back, since this will increase our schools’ financial woes (We’d probably need anywhere between a 10-20 percent increase in the DepEd budget to fund Grades 11 and 12, and this is just to maintain our current low performance levels!).

Likewise, our inability to provide adequate pre-service and in-service training for our teaching workforce prevents us from improving student performance. With over 500,000 public school teachers in DepEd’s stable, it’s a virtual impossibility to solve existing quality divides. Remember the facts? Majority of our Math and Science teachers do not have the expertise to teach the subjects they teach (We were told that 20 percent of Math teachers did not major in Mathematics; 58 percent of General Science teachers are not Science majors, while 73 percent of Physics and 66 percent of Chemistry teachers are also non-majors!). In the Self-Assessment Test for English, only 19 percent of our teachers scored 75 percent or better (We are told that 81 percent of teachers have inadequate proficiency in the English language!). And most alarming of all, I am told that there is a study commissioned by the Department of Education that paints an even more desperate picture of the competency of our teachers on the ground (Alas, DepEd has not yet released details of this study, which I think they should, in the interest of truth and the transparency needed to make sense of the problems WE ALL have to solve in basic education!).

Thus, it makes no sense to say that we can improve by simply adding more years to decongest the basic education cycle since, for instance, it makes no sense to think that a non-Physics major, can already teach Physics effectively if he or she was simply given a little more time to teach it in the classroom.

Moreover, not much has been done over the years to introduce pedagogical reforms, and we continue to overlook the immense potential of innovation and creativity in teaching. Despite a few best practices here and there, our schools have failed to become truly student-centered, non-coercive and child-friendly. The proof? A lot of kids drop out from school because, as the data shows, they don’t find schoolwork interesting enough (something that would have been mitigated by better pedagogical practices in the classroom).

Of course, I am not implying that K-12 proponents do not recognize these factors to be as significant or even more significant than what they perceive to be the problem of having a “short” 10-year cycle. It is most likely that they also see these factors as pivotal to reform. However, what’s amiss is the fact that they do not give a

3

DRAFT

proportional response to these two factors in terms of resource allocation, compared with what resources they are providing K-12—for this is what K-12 demands. So, notably, while we continue to have headaches with funding the classrooms required by the current 10-year system, we’d add more years into the cycle thereby adding to the classroom gap (and to our headaches!).

Naturally, K-12 supporters will bring up the “global standard” argument at this juncture. But is there in fact such a global standard?

What’s often cited by K-12 proponents are the Bologna Accord (1991) and the Washington Accord (1989). Bologna was designed to establish what is referred to as a European Higher Education Area that bridges comparable higher education standards between the European nations, making it easier for individuals to move from one country’s education system to another. Washington provides a similar link—what it calls substantial equivalence—that sets a benchmark for the field of engineering in participating nations. The argument, therefore, is that our current 10-year basic education system prevents us from being at par with the rest of the world, based on these two international accords.

There’s also Unesco’s ISCED—International Standard Classification of Education—which was designed to enable us to compare and benchmark the varying education systems around the globe. Here, a minimum of nine years of basic education is prescribed. And while it does tell us that further schooling should be a prerequisite for university—what it defines as upper secondary education—it is important to note that ISCED is simply a framework for analysis and not a standard for compliance.

In the Philippines, however, we are being given the impression that a 12-year “standard” must be complied with at all costs for us to be at par with the rest of the world. Obviously, this makes it easier to sell the idea of K-12 to the public. But if there is really no need for compliance with such a “standard”—as there really isn’t such a requirement—then we should, at the very least, rethink this whole proposition of adding more years, and more unnecessary expenditures, to an already overburdened education system.

If we take into account the fact that the ISCED framework specifies the necessary outcomes and minimum skill levels, we must also recognize the fact that adding the “required” number of years doesn’t automatically mean being up to standard. With our education system’s penchant for focusing on mere compliance instead of on actual quality, K-12 runs the risk of simply converting our basic education system into a 12-year diploma mill (At least, our 10-year diploma mill is less expensive!), wherein not much is really

4

DRAFT

learned in basic ed, even while more time is spent in school. The same holds true with both Bologna and Washington. The 12-year cycle looks good on paper, but if no real learning takes place, that piece of paper won’t have any value for our students.

And if it’s about our high school and college graduates not being recognized as such abroad, in cases wherein, for instance, they intend to take up graduate studies in prestigious universities in the US or the UK, then I believe our priorities may be quite unsound. It doesn’t make sense to require all our students to take on two more years when only a handful of rich kids will be going to Harvard, Wharton or Sloan anyway (Let these kids make the adjustments by taking up more pre-university or pre-grad school courses!). In short, whether it’s in compliance with ISCED’s framework or with Bologna and Washington, or any other foreign standards, our students can take on the necessary remedies available if and when such a need arises. For instance, if they want to take on graduate studies abroad or practice professions in highly regulated fields (engineering, medicine and the like). But for most Filipino students, this shouldn’t be made into a requirement for basic ed (Note: I will discuss this issue in length in one of the future installments of my column here.).

Similarly, the argument that our compliance with this global “standard” through K-12 will serve as a way for us to convey to the rest of the world the credibility of our education system—in Economics, a signaling device—may have value at the onset of K-12’s implementation. But in the long run, such signaling device loses its value as soon as the rest of the world finds out—and they will eventually find out—that there won’t be much learning attached to our 12-year cycle, and that our graduates have not acquired the skills they are expected to learn in those 12 years (As much as it has affected our current 10-year system, our education underspending will also adversely impact the additional years!).

Interestingly, New York state and several other states in the United States have recently introduced an accelerated 10-year program for basic education (Of course, this is limited to students who are already performing well. However, what’s compelling about this proposition is that a lot of students have been making a deliberate effort to improve in order to qualify for the program). The point I’m raising here is simple—It’s not about the time spent in school; it’s about the learning. Oh, and yes, there is no 12-year “standard”.

And as much as K-12 proponents are arguing that a 12-year cycle would be good for us, we should also look at the 12-year cycle being implemented in other countries. Sri Lanka, for instance, is also not performing well, despite the fact that they have more resources for education than we do on a per capita basis (and, we must note, they don’t suffer as much as we do in terms of complications like

5

DRAFT

topography and overpopulation). And yes, they’ve been under a 12-year system for many decades now (No, it’s not about the 12 years!).

In the Philippines, we keep saying that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. But K-12 presents itself as such since it imposes strict adherence to a “standard” that a lot of Filipino students don’t need (I remember a discussion I had with a DepEd Regional Director from Mindanao who was expressing her disagreement with government’s policy to give extra emphasis on English proficiency. She said: “A lot of our students just want to graduate and they’d go back to the farm—not because they have to but because they want to—so English isn’t something they’d need!”).

Whether or not we need to rethink our preconceptions about career paths, we must realize that it’s not about how long our students stay in school. What matters is what they learn in school. What’s important is that we provide our students the competencies and the skill levels sufficient for moving up the next level, whether it be college or grad school, or the world of work. And so, we should imagine how prolonging the basic education cycle can actually help improve learning. We should ask ourselves—How many more years will we need so that our students will learn Physics from a non-Physics major? How many more years will we need to make each and every Filipino student learn the basic competencies required in all other areas of study? All things being equal—with no other outside interventions in play—it will never happen in our lifetime.

RED HERRING

This, now, requires us to discuss new issues that have been added to the K-12 pie, which, seemingly, makes the proposal more palatable if not altogether viable to the unsuspecting onlooker. However, I must point out that this approach—arguing the programs viability by citing the inclusion of several quality interventions to K-12—simply makes us deviate from the issue at hand (adding more years to basic ed). This is what is referred to as a red herring fallacy.

Whether it’s the introduction of Multilingualism, or getting rid of Science as a subject in Grade 1, or emphasizing Reading and preparing early learners for the rigors of formal schooling, these must be taken out of the equation since, if you think about it, all these can also be introduced in the existing 10-year cycle anyway. Similarly, the issue of adding K—mandatory Kindergarten—is a red herring argument since no one is really questioning its wisdom at this point (Of course, the wisdom of how it is being implemented is another story!). In truth, the crux of this whole K-12 debate is the proposed Senior High School years—Grades 11 and 12—and, as such, these add-on features should be discussed separately.

6

DRAFT

What takes the cake, however, is the proposal to include the so-called “specializations” in senior high. In one top level DepEd presentation, this was even characterized as “in-depth” specializations, which, to my mind, implies that there is much to be expected from this particular adjunct to the K-12 proposal. Most certainly, I do recognize the value of imparting employable skills to our young, as many education stakeholders also recognize this as a good thing. However, again, this is a red herring argument since it does not fall within the exclusive domain of basic education (and the issue on hand is simply the aspect of K-12 that requires the additional two years of high school). But what’s even more bothersome with this particular aspect of the K-12 Program is that it contradicts the premise of K-12 itself—that we need the two more years so that we can decongest what they tell us to be an overloaded 10-year system—assuming, of course, that by “in-depth” DepEd means time and effort will be allotted to these specialized courses to really allow students to acquire the skills required to get jobs.

Aligned with the issue of jobs is the argument that, as some proponents are saying, it doesn’t make sense to continue with the 10-year cycle since this means our students graduate even before the age when it’s legal for them to work. What’s not discussed here is the fact that despite legal restrictions, a lot of young Filipinos work anyway (Out of necessity, some under-aged Filipinos actually quit school to work!) and, for argument’s sake, labor laws can always be amended to rationalize the employment of teens (Of course, proper safeguards must be applied and enforced!). If proponents think that under K-12, disadvantaged students—and their parents—will see the wisdom of attending school well enough to linger in high school for two more years, they’ll be in for a big surprise. Sure, education is important. Sure, it’s the best ticket out of poverty. Adding two more years, however, is not realistic because it does not take into account the current needs of the financially deprived. In a country wherein adolescent boys are required to leave school for long spells during the harvest season, and where even younger street urchins cannot be compelled to attend school, this argument does not make any sense at all.

Likewise, the argument that we need K-12 because our current curriculum is long due for an overhaul holds no merit since, obviously, we can implement changes in the curriculum even without the strategy that demands the additional years. Similarly, the argument that we need K-12 because it’ll make students stay in school due to the various classroom interventions to be introduced with it has no merit either, since we can also implement these interventions under the current 10-year system.

7

DRAFT

These red herring issues simply confuse us into thinking that all the bases are covered, when in fact, they’re not. Thus, it’s best not to include them when discussing the merits of the two extra years.

SLIPPERY SLOPE

Now, assuming that we accept the principles behind the K-12 proposal, the next big hurdle is for us to convince ourselves that simply because everything is all hunky-dory at this juncture (to be more precise, critical players in the education system are on board with K-12), things will turn out fine in the end. We cannot assume that quality learning will follow simply because we are going to implement K-12.

In fact, it is in the implementation of K-12 where I think we will find the program’s most fatal flaw.

In an ideal world, adding two more years would not pose much of a problem. But in a world like ours—wherein government cannot even provide something as basic as classrooms and chalk—it is a seriously dangerous proposition. At this point, it’s really all about the limited resources we have for education. It’s about money government spends for education that may be allocated for more viable programs, whether in or out of the realm of public education.

It’s also about the money parents need to cover the peripheral costs of their sons’ and daughters’ senior high school years, and the opportunities lost from not having them join the world of work during those two years (This, of course, is most critical to those who are in extreme poverty.).

And it’s not about asking for more and getting more, since, as most everyone in the know can attest, basic education has been enjoying substantial support from the most important sources, particularly the national government, the local governments and the business sector (Of course, we also recognize the contribution of regular Filipinos who assist public education via Brigada Eskwela and other forms of private sector subsidies and support.).

Thus, the discussion at hand is whether we should allot what little we have on the two more years or focus on improving what we already have under the existing 10-year system—perhaps zeroing in on the classroom backlog, investing on better in-service training, better instructional materials and better technologies for education, and providing more incentives for teachers to perform well. With K-12 looming large over the horizon, we can expect far fewer resources for these important interventions. Indeed, with its enormous price tag, K-12 will actually aggravate the situation on the

8

DRAFT

ground, especially in the far-flung areas where the need for the most basic resources are felt the most.

With the implementation this year of what was originally proclaimed as the “mandatory” Kindergarten component of K-12, we already got a preview of the imminent threat of K-12 to the education system, especially if we take into account our limited resources. Since we don’t have enough qualified teachers to teach Kindergarten, DepEd has lowered the qualifications of teachers, and this is capped by the dangerous decision to hire even less qualified “volunteer” teachers. And since we don’t have enough classrooms, DepEd has also lowered the standards of the Kindergarten classroom by saying they will use whatever available facility is available in the school, be it the home economics room or the ever-so-hazardous science laboratory. Sure, I value preschooling as much as the next guy. However, I do believe that there’s a big difference between having a good preschool education and a bad one. We cannot, in conscience, allow our preschools to function without adequate resources, be it qualified personnel or appropriate facilities and equipment.

Similarly, we’d have to take into account how well we can provide these so-called “specializations” in Senior High School with the resources that they will need to be effective. When DepEd initiated the effort to bring down technical and vocational programs to the secondary schools in 2006, it was done with a lot of self-restraint. The program was introduced in just 280 or so public high schools (not all 5,078 of them), and these were schools that already had the very same tech-voc programs in the past—DepEd merely retooled and “strengthened” these schools’ capacity, mainly through teacher training and facilities improvement. There was no attempt to go universal with this and, to my mind, this wasn’t part of the agenda to begin with. I wonder now—are we to assume that K-12 will provide these skills training programs in all senior high schools throughout the country? Good luck. Again, we need to remind ourselves of our limited resources.

On top of this, I’m worried about what specializations will be made available to our senior high students. Due to the number of schools that have to be served and, again, our limited resources, it’ll be safe to assume that our offerings for each student will be limited (even while there would probably be a sundry of programs across the country). Would we have the resources to provide one good program for each school? How about two? Either way, this amounts to what may be described as “forced” specialization, with a student being limited by circumstance—mainly geography—for what specialized skills program he or she can take. And this, of course, brings about even more problems, on top of which is the predisposition to assign students to a program that they are not predisposed to do. For

9

DRAFT

instance, if a school offers a program on computer programming, those enrolled in that school would be compelled to take on this specialization even if not all of them have the propensity for it or if not all of them are inclined to pursue it as a vocation in the future.

Thus, the specialization component of K-12 is not only a red herring issue, it is an implementation nightmare as well.

Despite the massive influx of resources for public education of late, we continue to see stopgap measures left and right. Not surprisingly, even the implementation of K-12 suffers the same fate. Aside from the stopgap measures already in place for its Kindergarten component, K-12 is now running on fumes so that its next installment can be made to materialize, beginning this coming school year. From the abbreviated calendar DepEd is using this year to develop K-12 to the abbreviated training of teachers this summer, it should be fair to challenge the effectiveness of the entire proposal. And, in case we have forgotten, it should be fair to remind everyone that the same rush to implementation and stopgap measures were also in play when DepEd implemented the Makabayan Curriculum at the start of the millennium. Yes, as in K-12, training was done through the more economical and less effective cascading method (allegedly, DepEd plans to conduct massive one-week training programs wherein each subject will be discussed in a day!). We should learn from Makabayan (I wonder if they even thought of analyzing what went wrong with it, something they should have done before embarking on yet another ambitious curriculum effort!). And while we failed in integrating subjects effectively via Makabayan, just remember, that curriculum didn’t demand more money for more year levels as K-12 is asking for now (Thus, expect more congestion and less conducive environments in school. Expect more headaches as well!).

While we’re at it, let’s reflect on how well we implemented the laws that provided free elementary and secondary education to all Filipinos. Yes, it’s easy to define policy; what’s hard is to provide the wherewithal to sustain it. Again, the issue of our limited resources comes to play.

With us adding two more years of high school, I can only wonder where the money is coming from. If the money exists, then why can’t we just use it to solve existing resource gaps?

Barring any act of God, it is safe to assume that the Philippine basic education sector will be up for a wild and scary ride in the coming years with K-12. Worse, there is no assurance that the program can actually solve the quality problem any time soon.

10

DRAFT

So even if DepEd comes up with a study that says students will benefit from K-12 financially, it’ll be safe to assume that the difference is so minuscule that such argument becomes inconsequential, precisely because we’re not providing sufficient skills either way (and again, we need to address the poor’s current financial concerns now!). And even without a new study on cohort survival, it’ll be safe to assume that a lot of students will drop out from high school because of the added years (They’ll be under-aged workers, too!).

FALSE DICHOTOMY

Finally, I come to the part wherein I say that there are actually other options to consider. Thus, the fallacy here is one of having a false dilemma—a false dichotomy—since what is implied is that we have only two options (K-12 or bust), when in fact, there are more.

Fr. Ben Nebres, while serving as President of the Ateneo de Manila University and Chair of then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s Task Force on Education, gave an interesting suggestion—place the additional year/s in the tertiary level. This proposal, to me, makes more sense since it really addresses the needs of those who need more years of study without unnecessarily burdening those who do not require it.

The beauty of this proposal is that it also saves government a considerable amount of money. For one, the number of college students who would be required to spend more years in school is way smaller than the number of high school students who will be required to spend two more years in high school under K-12. More so, the cost of the Nebres proposal will be chargeable to the student and not to the State, as is what K-12 requires, since government only provides free education up to high school.

And since we’re on the subject of other options, if the premise for adding more years to basic ed is that not much can be learned in 10 years, why can’t we just add more class time for each school year? I believe this can still be done simply because I went through it myself when I was young (Yes, the private school I studied in while in the Philippines required me to go to school the whole day—even while in the early grades—which meant we got to cover a lot more ground every school year for 10 long years. Meanwhile, the public school I went to while I was in the United States didn’t require much time from me on a daily basis, which meant their system demanded a 12-year basic education cycle.). What’s significant about this option is that it requires substantially less resources than having to offer two more levels in basic ed—both on the part of government and the average Filipino family. Surely it will also entail additional cost, say, for overtime pay for teachers or even the hiring of more

11

DRAFT

teachers, but this pales to the cost of having more classrooms as well as other resource requirements (including even more teachers) as is required by K-12. The analogy that comes to mind is the trimester system offered by De La Salle University, which meant students would spend more time in school each year to lessen the number of years required to complete a bachelor’s degree program (Obviously, La Sallian Br. Armin is well aware of this!). I wonder if DepEd did the math on this—How much will it cost us to add more hours to the yearly calendar (while still keeping everything within 10 years)? I’m betting it’ll be less than what K-12 requires (Moreover, I wonder if DepEd did a study on the negative impact on academic outcomes of the lack of rigor in the public school system. I’m betting this is a factor that’s overlooked; it’s something that can be solved by adding more time-on-task in each academic calendar year.).

While we’re at it, we should also consider abandoning the idea of providing employable skills to ALL our high school students, since these so-called specializations, if introduced universally, would only prove to be a waste of time for most students and, even more so, a waste of precious government resources. Think about it—It is an absolute waste of time and money. If we really think hard, we’d realize that the solution is right there in front of us—TESDA. Yes, our current system already provides a means by which young Filipinos can gain employable skills even if they do not go to college. Similar to Nebres’ proposal, keeping these “specialized” skills training under the ambit of our Technical Education and Skills Development Authority requires less resources from government than if it’s offered to all Senior High students under K-12 (Heck! Government can actually subsidize all TESDA courses and they’ll probably still come out ahead!). And yes, those inclined to pursue the tech-voc track can get their skills training on the 11th and 12th year—under TESDA—after they complete high school under the current 10-year system, sparing all others from specialized training that they may not want in the first place. (Yes, this option should also be placed on the table!).

DepEd should also consider spending the K-12 money on pedagogical reforms that can really spell the difference between quality education and what we have now. Innovation and creativity in the classroom trumps all other interventions when it comes to solving the problem of students’ lack of interest in school or their preparedness for going to school. And yes, this is the best way to make learning possible, too!

Finally, we should also look at the need to focus on the revision of laws and policies to make basic ed function well. Among others, we should revisit the localization of teachers (which prevents us from hiring the best teachers for critical subjects like high school Science and Math) and, like several progressive states in the US, we should

12

DRAFT

reconsider outdated civil service rules (which hinder government’s ability to get rid of the inept and the corrupt, and prevent it from hiring better teachers and non-teaching personnel!).

The point is this—It’s all about providing quality reforms that are not yet in place. If they can do it in bygone days, if they can do it now in our best private schools, and if they can do it now in other countries, then we can also do it now in our public schools if only we knew exactly how. By saying that we need to add two more years, is DepEd also saying that it doesn’t know how to do it with less time?

FALLACY OF THE HARD-HEADED

For some people, there is no turning back at this juncture. For them, the K-12 ship has sailed. Simply because they’ve gone full throttle on this program (or perhaps because they have no other ideas worth trying), they’d railroad this K-12 proposal into implementation despite its obvious fallacies and flaws. Please, no. Our leaders must possess enough wisdom and maturity to abandon bad ideas—even if these ideas came from them!

FROM FALLACY TO FEAR TO HOPE

This discussion was made with the greater interest of the Filipino public in mind. It is not meant, in any way, to belittle the efforts made by so many well-meaning individuals who have contributed much to help make this program work, some of whom I have worked with and whose competence and integrity I hold in very high regard. The questions I raised here are questions we need to answer—out of fear for our nation’s future—because I sincerely believe that they are valid questions to ask.

From the foregoing discussion, therefore, I am compelled to think that K-12—at least, the way it is being presented now—won’t be good for Philippine education.

Please tell me—more importantly, prove to me—that I’m wrong.

Let me be clear: I want K-12 to succeed if in fact there is no turning back. The whole point of raising all these issues now is so that we can find a way to make it succeed. But as I just stated, this requires us to really provide answers to the questions I have amplified here—and to many other questions posed by other concerned stakeholders over the last few months—so that we can truly make sense of this K-12 equation.

We should learn from the mistakes of the past. Our exuberance to provide social services despite our limited financial capacity only forces us to overreach—to bite off more than we can chew—which

13

DRAFT

only leads to mediocrity, and failure. And if we do not rethink K-12, we’re bound to fail again. I’m not saying scrap it altogether (Although this should also be an option!), but definitely, we should at least fix it to make it work. Otherwise, what we’ll have is nothing more than wasted resources, wasted opportunities, and wasted lives.

It is my hope that our leaders will be sensible enough to see the light.

14