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Philippine Educational Incompetence and its Effects on Students

In this world of uncertainty, students may question the true purpose of education. With this implemented ‘new normal’, we continue to experience the ambiguity of the Department of Education (DepEd), forgetting their true mission and ignoring their responsibility to properly guide students toward the future that awaits them. We belong to the majority of the students under the burden of an incompetent educational system, prioritizing quantity over quality learning. 

They say that we’re all on the same boat, when in fact, a lot of students sank and had no choice but to quit school due to the educational system, making it harder for students to adapt and catch up with all the tasks required for each subject. All points considered, why are students saying that the system is incompetent? Despite the COVID-19 pandemic causing education through the new normal, has Philippine education been incompetent ever since? Or is this mediocrity a byproduct of the pandemic and the pandemic only?

What is Education? The word is derived from Latin words educare, educere, and educatum. Education is a social institution through which society’s children are taught basic academic knowledge, learning skills, and cultural norms. It is a system which aims to synthesize the skills of individuals to maximize their learning development and optimize their knowledge (Dhaker, 2016). The ‘new normal’ is a term known to many that refers to the general term of the present situation of the world—the COVID-19 pandemic—an unusual, unprecedented, and unexpected turn of events. This has caused a surge of online learning and distanced modular learning for most if not all schools around the world (Dictionary.com, 2021). Lastly, incompetence is known as the inability to be competent; the inability to be excellent or satisfactory. It is a term utilized to describe the overall measures taken by the Philippine government throughout the new normal (Merriam-Webster.com, 2021).

As stated by Professor James Drever, education is a process in which and by which knowledge, character, and behavior of the young are shaped and molded. School includes the whole machinery of education from Kindergarten to College. A child's education begins as he enrolls in school and concludes when he graduates from college. Furthermore, the pandemic has been a global wake-up call to change our paradigms and the way we perceive the world. The new normal enforces alternative approaches to working and learning that have been both beneficial and disadvantageous to both teachers and students. 

In light of this, education can be defined as an integral component to the utmost growth of an individual as well as the maximum development of society. Just like how we try to find solutions to our own problems, the Department of Education (DepEd) and the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) have also been implementing operations and immediate actions that aim to mitigate the closure amidst COVID-19. At the height of the pandemic, educational institutions decided on remote learning as an alternative solution to this new normal. However, students are becoming deprived of their rights to receive quality education, especially with the country's state at the moment, causing a two-year hiatus on face-to-face classes and propagating the burden of self-learning. 

Students under the Philippine educational system are clearly not learning due to the fact that in lieu of increasing rates of students getting higher grades, the rates of depression among teens skyrocketed. This is due to the large number of tasks given to compensate for delayed learning—most of which are assigned to be finished before each Friday of the week. Contrary to common belief that students work better under pressure, studies show opposing results. The current at-home learning system that supposedly gives students flexibility inadvertently pressures them into finishing the tasks given, while managing their personal and social lives, most significantly, their mental health. In fact, nearly 1 in 10 young adults (8.9%) in the Philippines experience moderate to severe depressive symptoms (Puyat et. al, 2021).

CHED is the Philippines’ educational nucleus that controls the permitted school activities and regulations to be conducted by all schools nationwide. During the past year, CHED has dealt with a monstrosity of complaints and opinions from parents, teachers, and students questioning their appointed measures to alleviate the risks of providing poor education. Teachers have had to adapt to a great extent out of the typical classroom setting, transferring their skills to both online and printed modalities to cater the needs of students. Students are molded to be self-reliant, a step outside of the common role of teachers being the one to guide students completely; students are becoming their own second-teachers. With the need for guidance, parents are involved in learners’ activities—especially elementary students who are accustomed to teachers providing a larger package of guidance.

Students are pointing out the incompetence of DepEd’s educational system even more as the previous school year exposed the strict compliance of rules and regulations implemented by DepEd and CHED. The blended approach, a combination of synchronous and asynchronous teaching and learning modality, are the options considered by most of the basic education institutions. Students were told that both synchronous and asynchronous classes would be conducted, making it challenging for those with unstable internet connection and for those who are less privileged to acquire the gadgets and instruments required for better if not quality learning. Moreover, the modules and other learning materials handed out are not capable of providing a complete overview of the information from the references used, and are often incapable of gratifying the students’ requirement of substantial data.

In addition, the most dominant flaw of the present system is their negligence of the importance of the diversity of students’ capabilities. Not focusing on each of the students’ level of intelligence wastes the potential of producing quality students out of quality education. Showering students with loaded schedules because it seems to be the solution isn’t exactly the proper way to dispense supreme education for Filipinos. Only when a fish learns he is not good at climbing but good at swimming can that fish be content; only when a system learns they are inept and must focus on what teachers and students deserve, can the students and teachers be pleased with the system. 

Thus, for the students of the Philippines to be provided with brilliant education, the system itself must acknowledge that a greater number of subjects and tasks is not the operation to produce a quotient of skilled students. Especially amidst the new normal, DepEd and CHED must investigate the cause of students saying that the system is incompetent. The two primary school-related sectors of the government must understand their own mediocre implementations and curate an appropriate apparatus of learning fit for all students that is not an anti-poor program. The effects of such ineffective learning would be alleviated if the departments placed themselves in the shoes and cries of the students. Then and only then can Filipinos say that education truly is quality over quantity, not just for the present, but for the future that is reliant on the youth.

Reference List:

Dictionary definition

Rahul Dhaker, Education meaning, 2016: 

https://www.slideshare.net/rdhaker2011/education-meaning

Dictionary.com, New normal Definition & Meaning, 2021

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/new-normal

Merriam-Webster.com, Incompetence Definition, 2021

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/incompetence

J. Puyat, M.C. Conaco, J. Natividad, and M. Banal, Depressive symptoms among young adults in the Philippines: Results from a nationwide cross-sectional survey, 2021

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666915320300731

Bridge between the hook and the thesis statement

R.F. Ancheta, H.B. Ancheta, The new normal in education: A challenge to the private basic education institutions in the Philippines, 2020

https://scholar.google.com.ph/scholar?q=THE+NEW+NORMAL+IN+EDUCATION:+A+CHALLENGE+TO+THE+PRIVATE+BASIC+EDUCATION+INSTITUTIONS+IN+THE+PHILIPPINES%3F&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

J.A. Pacheco, The “new normal” in education, 2020

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11125-020-09521-x