Are you an educated Filipino?
By Geronimo L. Sy
Published Manila Times, 28 June 2007
Our state of education is hot news all year round and specially during June school openings. It reflects our collective preoccupation with formal learning and the need for personal advancement. Most everyone we know in our little circle of family and friends are either doing or planning on getting MBA's or just about any higher degree beyond college. The key question remains: are we educated?
Surface level, yesÐthe diploma and the tuition fee receipts testify to this. If yes, then how come our state of affairs? Is it about the rich and poor divide again? Is it the U.S. trained elite and the sosi schools oligarchs holding sway over teeming masses in substandard schools and hence the actually uneducated lot?
Way back in 1993, the Congressional Education Commission (EDCOM) already defined the ideal of an educated Filipino as someone "who respects human rights, whose personal discipline is guided by spiritual and human values, who can think critically and creatively, who can exercise responsibly his rights and duties as a citizen, whose mind is informed by science and reason and whose nationalism is based on a knowledge of our history and cultural heritage." Amen. Judged by this standard, most everyone of us can barely make it to passing grade.
Can I name five human rights, come to meetings on time and respect others and myself, understand national issues and make right choices, vote responsibly for responsible candidates, do the math and know why there is a Rizal marker in Belgium. It is tough and more than tough; it is complex, hard and downright impossible. We are not educated after all.
Rather, we regard an educated Filipino as someone who is functionally literate or with basic competenciesÐthe ability to count, to express and to solve problems and to possess knowledge, skills, values and attitudes. These factors require going to pre-school, pre-pre-school, elementary and high school at the very least. We are educated in this aspect but the plain truth and simple logic is that being educated does not necessarily and certainly does not mean being schooled or having academic credentials.
The good battle waged by our Department of Education (DepEd) is for functional literacy for all Filipinos to have the necessary learning tools to be able to survive, improve the quality of lives, to make informed decisions and to continue learning whether inside formal education or alternative learning systems. We need to stop equating being educated as going to school. Whether you are at the top of the food chain or at the bottommost rung, the life concerns are the same albeit of different degrees. I don't have to say that we are human beings united in our desire to uplift our condition.
In a very funny, ironic and real way, alas and worse than the rich and poor divide of which we are aware, it is the educational divide that is killing us. I am not talking about the chasm between the educated and uneducated for no one is really educated among us. I refer to our educational structure of public learning systems imposed upon us by people who do not have a crucial stake in them. If the school building contractors, textbook bidders, educators and policymakers including congressmen all send their children and grandchildren to our government schools, maybe that will start genuine reforms and put an end to the vicious cycle of finger-pointing and project-grabbing. Even well-meaning and capable administrators in DepEd can only do so much in the face of odds from every possible sector or player that believes that it alone is the solution to our educational woes. You know what happens with this kind of entitlement thinking.
To the question "Are you
an educated Filipino?" comes the answerÐthink of one thing you can and
will do today to improve basic education and I don't mean only for
schools. Better yet, get rid of one bad habit today.
