A Rusty, Golden Key

With the latest news, the Department of Education (DepEd) has received 23 million enrollees for the School Year 2020–2021 amidst the CoViD-19 pandemic. It can be noted that it is five million short from what they are targeting the amount of 28 million students.

It was all for the cause that one can’t afford at providing materials for academic matters such as gadgets and internet connection for online classes due to a high unemployment rate of 45%. A family is now being problematic in their everyday lives of surviving against starvation physically and mentally, and they cannot take any more time of thinking about knowledge.

Yet, even without pandemic, a long-time crisis is already being experienced by the majority of the Filipinos. And with the crisis per se, is the crisis of illiteracy.

Despite the fact that the United Nations declared Filipinos as the most literate in Southeast Asia with the literacy average rate of 97.95% along with Singapore, it is very undeniable that although a “No One Left Behind” motto can be read, it cannot be embodied in our education system.

For the reason that it was expensive as it is even scholarships are present, there are some being forced by their parents due to their financial status in life to be stopped in the meantime, but some really do not come back anymore at schools.

Some, just like on average episodes of Maalaala Mo Kaya (MMK) are forced to work on fields, construction sites, or being a helper on houses in Manila just to help their family passed a day of hunger.

But for the majority, those who have the key to access the gate towards success, there will still be a hindrance to stoop them over.

As per the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), among 79 participated countries, the Philippines made its mark as the country with the lowest average score of 340 in reading, second-lowest with 353 in Mathematics, and 357 in the subject of science.

Furthermore, it had been found out in the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) consultant Karen Brillantes’s article that numbers of Senior High Schoolers cannot even write “a decent English sentence”.

What could have been its cause? It was for Brillantes to say, that the SHS curricula set a too high standard for students in the process of learning, unprepared for the study materials they must-read.

It was all about that DepEd leveled it into advanced learners such as those within science high schools. With that, students are only submitting their researches, not as this is a part of their learning as learners and a role model, but they only treated it as a simple requirement. As to what it is, the K-12 program had blasted off for its supposed to be good aims, but it rather hit on another point just to extend the sufferings of the students and their teachers.

Lastly, with the lack of empathy towards sex education, emphasizing as always that we are “conservatives” about such topic, there are lots of student being victimized by another “disease” that is roaming around for a very long time, yet remains to be incurable despite the alarm being set on by the Commission on Population and Development (POPCOM) Executive Director Juan Antonio A. Perez III this 2019 as it victimized younger people, dropping its average age of teenage pregnancy from 10–14 years old by 50% since 2011, DepEd remains to not implement a proper plan for such things.

It was all later on that we have realized that the education that supposed to ponder us on through major battles of life suddenly became a rusty, golden key throughout the years. It had been turned out to be such a monstrous enemy, where only those with the privilege can control while those in the bottom level of the triangle can only look above.

And as to what the late Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago once said:

Do you know why politicians don’t want to improve the education system? Because they are afraid of educated voters.

We should not let those who sit on the throne manipulate things out for us to be idle of their wrongdoings. We should do actions, we should fight for our rights such as the reformation for the education system. At the end of all this, we should not let our ally be our enemy, we should not let the key to success be the key to injustice.