When Reforms Don't Transform: Reflections on Philippine Education (Last Part in a Series)

UP Centennial Lecture; November 12, 2008 (DRAFT)
by Ma. Cynthia Rose B. Bautista, Allan B. I. Bernardo, and Dina Ocampo

The Case of Language and Education

Our contention is that learning has not been the true focus of reforms though these have been touted as their primary objective. The most glaring example of this is the policy on the medium of instruction. We will convince you that the child’s language is best as the first language of education. We will offer four hypotheses explaining why the DepEd has not morphed its policies and practices / according to the scientific evidence on language, literacy and learning and on the socio-cultural premises of education.

Our first consideration is the linguistic context of the Philippines. We are a multi-lingual nation with more or less 171 living languages. Filipino is spoken by at least 84% of the population. Philippine English is spoken by 56% of the population and is still an official language of government, business and education. There are 10 regional lingua francae.  Additionally, Arabic, Chinese, and Spanish are also valued. All these constantly interact as people move from place to place, meet sweethearts from across the river, or migrate from town to town. In short, the average Filipino is quadrilingual.

If we subtract 15 widely spoken languages from all of our 171 unique tongues, there remain 156 other vernaculars actively used in daily living. In addition, we aspire to teach our citizens to be fluent in our national language and competent in English. With the institutionalization ofthe Madaris schools by the DepEd, Arabic is llikewise a language to be learned in schools.

Given the socio-linguistic landscape of the Philippines, multilingualism should be placed at the center of the education discussion. Multilingual persons have unique linguistic configurations made up of interacting systems of phonology, semantics, and syntax in their linguistic repertoire. Drawing from the findings of Philippine research, bilingual Filipino children are of two types. First are children who learn the first language at home and then acquire additional languages from their community.  The second are those without a singular mother tongue. That is, they reside in home environments with two or more languages perpetually used.  These children are, from the beginning of their lives, bilingual. In both instances, it can be said that Filipino children acquire one to two languages spontaneously, and, learn the next languages in school.

The medium of instruction issue in Philippine basic education is a recurring nightmare. For over 80 years,the recommendation to use the child’s language in schools as the medium of learning has been consistently rejected. From the 1920s to the present, the pressures exerted by different sectors and advocates in the name of nation building, global participation, regional identity, cultural integrity, or economic progress and overseas employment caused decisions on the language issue to swing from one extreme to another. The pendulum stopped dead center resulting in the Department of Education and Culture (DEC) Order No. 25, series. 1973 or the Bilingual Education Policy. This compromise policy operationally defines the nature of bilingual education in the country. The curriculum was divided according to languages. Pilipino, changed to Filipino in 1987, was designated the medium of instruction for social studies, music, arts, physical education, home economics, practical arts and character education. The English language domains were math, science  and technology education.

Where has the Bilingual Education Policy or BEP brought us? This question would be best answered by studying the performance of school children in all the subject areas of the curriculum and correlating these with implementation assessments of the BEP. Unfortunately,longitudinal data based on stable product assessments of language and overall learning are not available.

The fact that achievement in English and Filipino has been low suggests that the BEP implementation has not resulted in improved proficiency in both languages. This policy seems to have grossly failed to support learning of the two languages, much less, learning content through the use of these languages.

Generations of teachers consistently report on the difficulties their students face while learning English and Filipino, and, worse, while trying to learn math and science in English, and social studies in Filipino. Percentage of schools that surpassed 60% on the National Achievement Tests in Math, English, Science and Overall across 3 years. It suggests that performance in English is much lower than performance in Math and Science.

This leads us to an important question: How then can English be the language of learning if it is not strong enough to support learning? The children have obviously not reached the required cognitive academic language proficiency in English to use it for learning Math and Science.  BEAM’s Regional Assessment of Math and Science data bolster this observation. Students whose teachers shifted to the vernacular in explaining concepts had better scores on questions that measure higher order thinking skills.

Therefore, it seems that English was not used as the language for teaching Math and Science. Otherwise, performance in these two subjects might have been even lower. Thank goodness for teachers who were sensitive enough to use the language of the children to explain Math and Science. Possibly, the teachers themselves were not proficient in English and thus resorted to expressing their thoughts in the vernacular. The latter inference is consistent with the frequently lamented English language proficiency of teachers. Could it be that they themselves are victims of the implementation of a flawed policy?

The bilingual education policy of DepEd is not cognizant that language and learning are conditional processes as evidenced by the division of core subjects according to language.  This was done despite DepEd’s close ties with the UNESCO, which since the 1950s, has advocated for the use the mother tongue as the first language of education; and despite the findings of its own superintendent Jose V. Aguilar in 1948 which showed that children schooled for two years in their native language surpassed the performance of other students in all subjects by the end of Grade 3. Studies done over the last 50 years including those done within and by the DepEd have affirmed and confirmed similar findings. This proves that foundational language learning is positively related to learning content and additional languages.

Difficulties experienced by children in learning the languages as a result of the division of the curriculum according to languages may have dampened their interest to learn the content areas. Instead, , English and Filipino could have been learned using any topic or issue of interest to the learner. The use of storybooks, poetry and song would have done beautifully in supporting language development especially in the early years. Furthermore, it would have promoted cultural literacy.

Languages matter in child learning. As a powerful cultural marker, the child’s language should be respected in schools. Sadly, children are still being penalized for speaking their own language in school premises. Long ago, the fine was at 25 centavos per word. Now, because of inflation, the going rate is five pesos per word spoken. It is curious where the fine goes.

Language use in schools impacts on the affective side of learning. Children who are made to read in a language they do not understand get into the habit of not thinking about what they read. Worse, their self-esteem suffers. On average over 30 years, the Philippines’ highest drop out rate in the elementary level is at Grade 2. Maybe, the children’s engagement with school has been hampered by their inability to cope with the language requirements exacted by the curriculum. Children experiencing failure in reading and writing in Filipino and English lose their motivation to attend school. They feel marginalized in classrooms that are supposed to liberate their minds.

The challenges that children encounter due to the lack of oral language background in the target languages create multiple layers of difficulty. Students have to learn two unfamiliar languages simultaneously. They have to master the vocabulary and grammar of these languages to make meaning. While doing that, they have to learn to read. Then, they have to be quick because they have to learn social studies, math and science at the same time. Though there is an 8-week induction curriculum for Grade 1, it is impossible to develop mastery in Filipino and English in such a short period of time. If you were a child, would you still want to go to school?

Teachers’ understanding of the relationship between multilingualism and multiliteracy has direct bearing on how they teach children how to read. Teacher education curricula do not explicitly include training on understanding this relationship. In so doing, the mistaken notion that literacy develops in the same way in any language is perpetuated. Yet all Grade 1 teachers will tell you that it is easier to teach children to read in Filipino because it has a simpler orthography and has a more familiar vocabulary than English. If schools for teachers only paid attention to the observations of teachers in the field, then the teaching of reading would have long started from the language children already knew. Instead, the reading comprehension problems so frequently reported in both public and private schools prevail.

What has kept the DepEd from developing bilingual competence among Filipino children? We offer four points of analysis.

First, it formulated a weak policy on bilingual education. The BEP does not stand on strong theoretical grounds. It ignored the long-standing and empirically validated view of how learning best happens among children and how new language learning should be built upon a mastery of the child’s native language. Furthermore, the policy also glossed over the sociocultural issues in education / by relegating the local languages as auxiliary media of instruction.

Second, the DepEd relinquished control over the curriculum decades ago and handed it over to politicians, most of whom disregard scientific research and the experiences of teachers in favor of their own personal anecdotes.

In 1939, the Education secretary decided on the language issue precisely because of its curricular significance. In our time, the DepEd fence sits and waits for directives from the Office of the President, legislators or donors. With the prospect of employment for Filipinos in the call-center industry and resource management sector, the Arroyo administration is aggressively championing the use of English as the medium of instruction in Philippine schools through Executive Order 210 of 2003. This has been seconded by House Bill 4701 on "Strengthening and Enhancing the Use of English as the Medium of Instruction in Philippine Schools.” This proposed legislation seeks to make English the medium of instruction from Grade 3 onwards. Ironically, these are advanced in the context of findings that teachers’ language proficiency is at the Grade 3 level. The incongruity between reality and policy directives by the present administration is disturbingly glaring in its obvious disregard of scientific evidence.

On the other side is House Bill 3719, “An Act Establishing a Multi-Lingual Education and Literacy Program” written by Congressman Magtanggol Gunigundo which espouses the use of the mother tongue in all grades of elementary education. The Gunigundo bill is backed up by research is a breath of fresh air among all the other opinions emanating from the House of Representatives about the language issue.  However, whether ill or well-advised, the two House Bills will still end up telling the DepEd what to do.

DepEd, is the teacher of the nation. The hierarchical obeisance within DepEd has hindered it from performing this role to the fullest. Like all teachers, it must advocate for its students’ best interests. The political motives of those promoting the sole use of English as medium of instruction must be thwarted by the DepEd to protect the Filipino child’s right to quality and relevant education. The 2006 BESRA reform strategies for language and literacy education and their necessary support mechanisms intended to do just that. However, two years hence, the DepEd has yet to herald the BESRA language recommendations as its own.

Third, the situation is exacerbated by the relative absence of serious efforts on the part of DepEd to educate legislators and the rest of society. While it is true that many representatives have not attended the congressional committee hearings on bills pertaining to language, it is also true that those who represented the DepEd could not articulate the DepEd position on the matter adequately. Thus, it is not surprising that legislators have glossed over what the DepEd may have wanted to communicate. Instead, they focused solely on employment growth paradigms in deciding on the language of education while ignoring the widely accepted research on culture, learning and child development. By keeping learning in the periphery and targeting overseas employment, policies may arise that encourage shortcuts to learning and thus, stunt cognitive development among children.

Finally, the DepEd has been unable to negotiate a shift from structural learning paradigms to more socio-constructivist methods of teaching and assessment of language and literacy.  Teachers narrate that lessons continue to be taught by rote. The emphasis on products rather than learning processes has been anathema to the formation of functional, critical and creative thinking. The influence of BEAM and TEEP has obviously not permeated the entire system even if together, these two major reform efforts, spanned about 33% of all Philippine elementary schools.

Another important aspect is the lack of recognition of the power of teachers to make or break educational innovation. It is important that teachers believe in the programs they are implementing. According to the report of Dumatog and Dekker in 2003, after some years of implementation of the first language component, “Teachers now realize the potential of their own vernacular and culture to be a spring-board for enhancing children’s reading comprehension.

“Individual differences” is a simple and fundamental principle in education which means that teaching must start with the students’ strengths. This is based on the view of learning that children will eventually traverse the unknown if they are able to connect this to what they already know.

To be consistent with this principle, education should begin with the child’s language before systematically moving towards our desired additional languages.

Conclusions

In the past hour, we have tried to show why education reforms do not transform.

First, it is because of a highly centralized system that does not give teachers and principals the freedom and responsibility to make the best schools for their children and communities.

Second, it is because of the projectized-approach to reform, when key reform thrusts are externally induced and then dropped once the project is over, and where there are weak institutional systems for processing and scaling up successful reform innovations.

Third, it is because reforms have focused on education inputs such as school buildings, textbooks, computers, teacher training, and have mistakenly assumed that these will automatically yield better learning performance and outcomes.

Fourth, it is because learning has been simply assumed. It has actually been taken for granted in the reform processes. Reforms have failed to directly probe into the questions of what students should be learning, how learning becomes relevanT and the ways learning can happen in the context of diversity among children and communities. Amidst all this, we argued that there has been no understanding of learning as an organizing framework for schools and their transformation.

As a result of the confluence of these factors, we now have an educational system that is tireless in its repetition of problems and so-called solutions. We have not actually improved our schools, developed life long learners, and citizens with the competencies to improve their personal circumstances while transforming Philippine society for the better.

We have also suggested the features of reforms that can actually transform.

First, we need to anchor reform in a fine appreciation of the various forms and ways of learning that will be functional and transformative to the individual and to Philippine society.

Second, we need to break away from the one-size-fits-all mindset when formulating solutions to our educational concerns, whether these refer to teaching practices, textbooks, learning activities, assessment procedures or the languages of learning.

Third, we must recognize the importance of formal learning experiences in basic education so that these can serve as scaffolds for subsequent learning requirements and choices. At the same time, we need to value both formal and alternative learning systems as viable venues for building desirable competencies.

Fourth, we need capable and empowered teachers and school heads who would be responsible for making decisions on what educational inputs and learning systems will work best for the learners in their schools and communities.

Fifth, we need to fast-track moves to decentralize the educational system, and support schoolbased management that is anchored on learning-oriented principles and the aspirations of their immediate and larger communities.

Our lecture put learning at the heart of its recommendations to swing the pendulum away from the unquestioned assumption that it just happens in a black box to which various inputs are thrown. We understand why the pendulum is on the side that relegates learning to the margins. The pressing issues that emanate from an increasing need for education services such as classrooms, learning materials, and teachers, and their inequitable distribution, demand urgent and immediate attention. We are not denigrating the role of inputs in facilitating or mediating the learning process. Indeed, we have seen how the delivery of such inputs to poverty-stricken schools has roused communities to participate in the education of their children. Our appeal, however, is for learning to be the reference point of all our education reform interventions.

On the other hand, we also realize from the experiences of highly effective learning-oriented projects like IMPACT and BEAM that enabling conditions such as decentralization have to be in place. Since these conditions run against prevailing institutional systems and practices, their realization calls for reformist interventions that are integrated rather than disjointed; comprehensive rather than piecemeal; simultaneous rather than sequential.

Moreover, these reforms should be adaptive to different socio-cultural terrains; and conducted on a scale that will make a difference. We are saying as well that the decentralization efforts in education ought to be seen as a movement that engages communities on the ground as well as virtual communities of education advocates. In this regard, BESRA is certainly a positive step forward. Our recommendation is to expand it to include all post-secondary education.

But comprehensive frameworks do not make reform. To illustrate, we do not only have the law for decentralization in basic education, we also have well articulated frameworks like BESRA. Reforms do not transform when such laws and frameworks are not implemented with the passion and organization of reformists. We need a roadmap, detailed implementation plans, and the organization to tap into the energies of education reformists inside and outside the bureaucracy and channel these to the schools.

Code of Ethics of Professional Teachers

Pursuant to the provisions of paragraph (e), Article 11, of R.A. No. 7836, otherwise known as the Philippine Teachers Professionalization Act of 1994 and paragraph (a), section 6, P.D. No. 223, as amended, the Board for Professional Teachers hereby adopt the Code of Ethics for Professional Teachers.

Preamble

Teachers are duly licensed professionals who possesses dignity and reputation with high moral values as well as technical and professional competence in the practice of their noble profession, and they strictly adhere to, observe, and practice this set of ethical and moral principles, standards, and values.

Article I: Scope and Limitations

Section 1. The Philippine Constitution provides that all educational institution shall offer quality education for all competent teachers. Committed to its full realization, the provision of this Code shall apply, therefore, to all teachers in schools in the Philippines.

Section 2. This Code covers all public and private school teachers in all educational institutions at the preschool, primary, elementary, and secondary levels whether academic, vocational, special, technical, or non-formal. The term “teacher” shall include industrial arts or vocational teachers and all other persons performing supervisory and /or administrative functions in all school at the aforesaid levels, whether on full time or part-time basis.

Article II: The Teacher and the State

Section 1. The schools are the nurseries of the future citizens of the state; each teacher is a trustee of the cultural and educational heritage of the nation and is under obligation to transmit to learners such heritage as well as to elevate national morality, promote national pride, cultivate love of country, instill allegiance to the constitution and for all duly constituted authorities, and promote obedience to the laws of the state.

Section 2. Every teacher or school official shall actively help carry out the declared policies of the state, and shall take an oath to this effect.

Section 3. In the interest of the State and of the Filipino people as much as of his own, every teacher shall be physically, mentally and morally fit.

Section 4. Every teacher shall possess and actualize a full commitment and devotion to duty.

Section 5. A teacher shall not engage in the promotion of any political, religious, or other partisan interest, and shall not, directly or indirectly, solicit, require, collect, or receive any money or service or other valuable material from any person or entity for such purposes.

Section 6. Every teacher shall vote and shall exercise all other constitutional rights and responsibility.

Section 7. A teacher shall not use his position or official authority or influence to coerce any other person to follow any political course of action.

Section 8. Every teacher shall enjoy academic freedom and shall have privilege of expounding the product of his researches and investigations; provided that, if the results are inimical to the declared policies of the State, they shall be brought to the proper authorities for appropriate remedial action.

Article III: The Teacher and the Community

Section 1. A teacher is a facilitator of learning and of the development of the youth; he shall, therefore, render the best service by providing an environment conducive to such learning and growth.

Section 2. Every teacher shall provide leadership and initiative to actively participate in community movements for moral, social, educational, economic and civic betterment.

Section 3. Every teacher shall merit reasonable social recognition for which purpose he shall behave with honor and dignity at all times and refrain from such activities as gambling, smoking, drunkenness, and other excesses, much less illicit relations.

Section 4. Every teacher shall live for and with the community and shall, therefore, study and understand local customs and traditions in order to have sympathetic attitude, therefore, refrain from disparaging the community.

Section 5. Every teacher shall help the school keep the people in the community informed about the school’s work and accomplishments as well as its needs and problems.

Section 6. Every teacher is intellectual leader in the community, especially in the barangay, and shall welcome the opportunity to provide such leadership when needed, to extend counseling services, as appropriate, and to actively be involved in matters affecting the welfare of the people.

Section 7. Every teacher shall maintain harmonious and pleasant personal and official relations with other professionals, with government officials, and with the people, individually or collectively.

Section 8. A teacher posses freedom to attend church and worships as appropriate, but shall not use his positions and influence to proselyte others.

Article IV: A Teacher and the Profession

Section 1. Every teacher shall actively insure that teaching is the noblest profession, and shall manifest genuine enthusiasm and pride in teaching as a noble calling.

Section 2. Every teacher shall uphold the highest possible standards of quality education, shall make the best preparations for the career of teaching, and shall be at his best at all times and in the practice of his profession.

Section 3. Every teacher shall participate in the Continuing Professional Education (CPE) program of the Professional Regulation Commission, and shall pursue such other studies as will improve his efficiency, enhance the prestige of the profession, and strengthen his competence, virtues, and productivity in order to be nationally and internationally competitive.

Section 4. Every teacher shall help, if duly authorized, to seek support from the school, but shall not make improper misrepresentations through personal advertisements and other questionable means.

Section 5. Every teacher shall use the teaching profession in a manner that makes it dignified means for earning a descent living.

Article V: The Teachers and the Profession

Section 1. Teachers shall, at all times, be imbued with the spirit of professional loyalty, mutual confidence, and faith in one another, self-sacrifice for the common good, and full cooperation with colleagues. When the best interest of the learners, the school, or the profession is at stake in any controversy, teachers shall support one another.

Section 2. A teacher is not entitled to claim credit or work not of his own, and shall give due credit for the work of others which he may use.

Section 3. Before leaving his position, a teacher shall organize for whoever assumes the position such records and other data as are necessary to carry on the work.

Section 4. A teacher shall hold inviolate all confidential information concerning associates and the school, and shall not divulge to anyone documents which has not been officially released, or remove records from files without permission.

Section 5. It shall be the responsibility of every teacher to seek correctives for what may appear to be an unprofessional and unethical conduct of any associate. However, this may be done only if there is incontrovertible evidence for such conduct.

Section 6. A teacher may submit to the proper authorities any justifiable criticism against an associate, preferably in writing, without violating the right of the individual concerned.

Section 7. A teacher may apply for a vacant position for which he is qualified; provided that he respects the system of selection on the basis of merit and competence; provided, further, that all qualified candidates are given the opportunity to be considered.

Article VI: The Teacher and Higher Authorities in the Profession

Section 1. Every teacher shall make it his duty to make an honest effort to understand and support the legitimate policies of the school and the administration regardless of personal feeling or private opinion and shall faithfully carry them out.

Section 2. A teacher shall not make any false accusations or charges against superiors, especially under anonymity. However, if there are valid charges, he should present such under oath to competent authority.

Section 3. A teacher shall transact all official business through channels except when special conditions warrant a different procedure, such as when special conditions are advocated but are opposed by immediate superiors, in which case, the teacher shall appeal directly to the appropriate higher authority.

Section 4. Every teacher, individually or as part of a group, has a right to seek redress against injustice to the administration and to extent possible, shall raise grievances within acceptable democratic possesses. In doing so, they shall avoid jeopardizing the interest and the welfare of learners whose right to learn must be respected.

Section 5. Every teacher has a right to invoke the principle that appointments, promotions, and transfer of teachers are made only on the basis of merit and needed in the interest of the service.

Section 6. A teacher who accepts a position assumes a contractual obligation to live up to his contract, assuming full knowledge of employment terms and conditions.

Article VII: School Officials, Teachers, and Other Personnel

Section 1. All school officials shall at all times show professional courtesy, helpfulness and sympathy towards teachers and other personnel, such practices being standards of effective school supervision, dignified administration, responsible leadership and enlightened directions.

Section 2. School officials, teachers, and other school personnel shall consider it their cooperative responsibility to formulate policies or introduce important changes in the system at all levels.

Section 3. School officials shall encourage and attend the professional growth of all teachers under them such as recommending them for promotion, giving them due recognition for meritorious performance, and allowing them to participate in conferences in training programs.

Section 4. No school officials shall dismiss or recommend for dismissal a teacher or other subordinates except for cause.

Section 5. School authorities concern shall ensure that public school teachers are employed in accordance with pertinent civil service rules, and private school teachers are issued contracts specifying the terms and conditions of their work; provided that they are given, if qualified, subsequent permanent tenure, in accordance with existing laws.

Article VIII: The Teachers and Learners

Section 1. A teacher has a right and duty to determine the academic marks and the promotions of learners in the subject or grades he handles, provided that such determination shall be in accordance with generally accepted procedures of evaluation and measurement. In case of any complaint, teachers concerned shall immediately take appropriate actions, observing due process.

Section 2. A teacher shall recognize that the interest and welfare of learners are of first and foremost concern, and shall deal justifiably and impartially with each of them.

Section 3. Under no circumstance shall a teacher be prejudiced or discriminate against a learner.

Section 4. A teacher shall not accept favors or gifts from learners, their parents or others in their behalf in exchange for requested concessions, especially if undeserved.

Section 5. A teacher shall not accept, directly or indirectly, any remuneration from tutorials other what is authorized for such service.

Section 6. A teacher shall base the evaluation of the learner’s work only in merit and quality of academic performance.

Section 7. In a situation where mutual attraction and subsequent love develop between teacher and learner, the teacher shall exercise utmost professional discretion to avoid scandal, gossip and preferential treatment of the learner.

Section 8. A teacher shall not inflict corporal punishment on offending learners nor make deductions from their scholastic ratings as a punishment for acts which are clearly not manifestation of poor scholarship.

Section 9. A teacher shall ensure that conditions contribute to the maximum development of learners are adequate, and shall extend needed assistance in preventing or solving learner’s problems and difficulties.

Article IX: The Teachers and Parents

Section 1. Every teacher shall establish and maintain cordial relations with parents, and shall conduct himself to merit their confidence and respect.

Section 2. Every teacher shall inform parents, through proper authorities, of the progress and deficiencies of learner under him, exercising utmost candor and tact in pointing out the learner's deficiencies and in seeking parent’s cooperation for the proper guidance and improvement of the learners.

Section 3. A teacher shall hear parent’s complaints with sympathy and understanding, and shall discourage unfair criticism.

Article X: The Teacher and Business

Section 1. A teacher has the right to engage, directly or indirectly, in legitimate income generation; provided that it does not relate to or adversely affect his work as a teacher.

Section 2. A teacher shall maintain a good reputation with respect to the financial matters such as in the settlement of his debts and loans in arranging satisfactorily his private financial affairs.

Section 3. No teacher shall act, directly or indirectly, as agent of, or be financially interested in, any commercial venture which furnish textbooks and other school commodities in the purchase and disposal of which he can exercise official influence, except only when his assignment is inherently, related to such purchase and disposal; provided they shall be in accordance with the existing regulations; provided, further, that members of duly recognized teachers cooperatives may participate in the distribution and sale of such commodities.

Article XI: The Teacher as a Person

Section 1. A teacher is, above all, a human being endowed with life for which it is the highest obligation to live with dignity at all times whether in school, in the home, or elsewhere.

Section 2. A teacher shall place premium upon self-discipline as the primary principle of personal behavior in all relationships with others and in all situations.

Section 3. A teacher shall maintain at all times a dignified personality which could serve as a model worthy of emulation by learners, peers and all others.

Section 4. A teacher shall always recognize the Almighty God as guide of his own destiny and of the destinies of men and nations.

Article XII: Disciplinary Actions

Section 1. Any violation of any provision of this code shall be sufficient ground for the imposition against the erring teacher of the disciplinary action consisting of revocation of his Certification of Registration and License as a Professional Teacher, suspension from the practice of teaching profession, or reprimand or cancellation of his temporary/special permit under causes specified in Sec. 23, Article III or R.A. No. 7836, and under Rule 31, Article VIII, of the Rules and Regulations Implementing R.A. 7836.

Article XIII: Effectivity

Section 1. This Code shall take effect upon approval by the Professional Regulation Commission and after sixty (60) days following its publication in the Official Gazette or any newspaper of general circulation, whichever is earlier.

When Reforms Don't Transform: Reflections on Philippine Education (Third Part in a Series)

UP Centennial Lecture; November 12, 2008 (DRAFT)
by Ma. Cynthia Rose B. Bautista, Allan B. I. Bernardo, and Dina Ocampo

Learning in the periphery of reform

For decades now, we have been talking about education in the Philippines in “crisis” terms. Asin any such situation, decisions are made out of urgency or exigency, instead of long-term considerations. Thus, education reform often resembles relief operations that hurriedly address obvious gaps and plug problematic holes in the system. The problem with doing reform using a “crisis-relief” framework is that it does not directly resolve the crisis. We never get to truly reflect on what it is we should be reforming and how.

In contrast, countries that successfully reformed their educational systems used a long-term transformational approach. The process of reform was both comprehensive and sustained over time. The transformation of their educational systems was designed and so that they could meet long-term national development goals. These successful reforms first reckoned with a rather simple question: “How do we reform the school system so that students learn better?” Corollary is the more difficult problem: “What should students be learning in schools?” These countries have grappled with defining what kind of knowledge and skills their citizens need to allow them to be effective participants in today’s rapidly changing, highly networked, knowledge societies.

In the Philippines, there are initiatives that aim to improve student achievement levels, such as the 57-75 advocacy to reverse the low academic achievement of students. But the question of what and how our students should be learning has not been a central concern in discussions of education reform.

We propose that all education reform in the Philippines first formulate answers to these fundamental questions: First, what kinds of knowledge and skills will enable Filipinos to participate effectively in the world of work and also to transform their communities and societies? Second, what kinds of knowledge and skills will enable citizens to build better futures for themselves and for others in their communities?

The present answers to these questions can be found in the DepEd and CHED curriculum standards for schools and specific courses. The present learning goals are defined in terms of particular sets and sequences of concepts and procedures. In contrast, in current reform discourses, students need to learn competencies, and not just knowledge and skills.

A competency is the ability to successfully carry out a task with complex requirements. It includes both cognitive and non-cognitive knowledge and skills. Cognitive knowledge requires higher levels of thinking such as being able to manage and critically reflect on information in order to apply these for the learners’ purposes. The non-cognitive dimensions refer to values,beliefs, and attitudes that motivate and guide the performance of these complex tasks.

The key competency that should be targeted by all school systems is subsumed under the expanded definition of functional literacy. For example, the Organisation for Economic Coopertion and Development or OECD defines functional literacy as “the capacity to access, integrate, evaluate and manage information and knowledge. It provides learners a window to the world and the linguistic, textual and symbolic tools to engage with the world as acting and autonomous individuals interacting with various groups.”

This expanded definition is now a key feature of learning goals in truly reformed educational systems. In addition, reformist educational systems include “transformational citizenship” as an important learning goal, where citizenship is conceived of as involving the competencies to make societies and communities better for all people.

We underscore that expanded functional literacy will promote transformational citizenship if the texts and materials of our public social life are used as objects of the competencies. As a result,learners will not be mere passive observers of public services and governance. Instead, they will participate in transformative ways; they will learn to understand and analyze, to negotiate and cooperate, and if necessary, to protest and initiate new forms of social participation.

This is when the non-cognitive dimensions of these competencies become important. It is not sufficient to simply equip our students with high level technical knowledge. We must develop in them the motivation and the confidence to apply their mental abilities to transform Philippine society. More importantly, we must develop the belief and the conviction that, yes, they can transform Philippine society.

On paper, the various DepED and CHED curricular statements make reference to such goals and aspirations. But what we find in these national curricula are still isolated bits of knowledge and skills which are clearly inadequate compared to the expanded concepts of functional literacy and transformational citizenship. So far, we have not seriously discussed how to reform this curriculum in substantial terms.

In many Philippine communities, the successful high school or college graduates are the ones most likely to leave their community. Why? Because the knowledge and skills they have acquired in our schools are often irrelevant, or worse, opposed and hostile to the ways of life in their community. The modus vivendi is that these educated persons leave the community, and support the community by sending money or other forms of support to their families. This will always be the case as long as our schools do not develop the competencies that will motivate them to be useful and transformative in communities they value,

Since the 1960’s, mass movements have criticized the irrelevance of our formal education system to the plight of Filipinos in poor communities. Our partners in industry have also called our attention to the mismatch of what our students are learning in our schools to their employment requirements. These are presently complicated by the fact that social environments
are rapidly transitioning, and that Filipinos now move across different geographic and cultural spaces, either by choice or by circumstance. Because of this, specific competencies become obsolete rather easily, and persons have to acquire new sets of competencies as they move on in their lives.

This leads us to the discourse of lifelong learning. Ten years ago, noted scholar Simon Papert wrote: “…the model that says, learn while you’re at school, the skills that you will apply during your lifetime is no longer tenable. The skills that you can learn when you’re at school will not be applicable. They will be obsolete by the time you get into the workplace and need them… The one really competitive skill is the skill of being able to learn...”

In addition to the two goals of expanded functional literacy and transformational citizenship, we should add a third goal which is to develop in all our students an intrinsic value for learning and knowledge. This will ensure that the competencies associated with functional literacy and transformational citizenship are continuously renewed as the person grows and moves through different spheres of life and work.

So far, we have emphasized the need to shift from developing knowledge and skills to developing competencies that are comprised of expanded functional literacy; transformational citizenship; and the value for lifelong learning.  How does one actually develop these types of competencies? What types of schools and learning activities would help our students develop these learning goals?

Our answer is: Schools that create powerful environments where diverse types of students can work together to develop these competencies. There is no single standard of powerful learning environments, instead these are characterized by core features. Schools must:

1. articulate and aim to develop high standards of performance related to the target competencies,
2. provide opportunities to actively work on real-life problems and projects, where the integration and application of rich knowledge is experienced;
3. provide opportunities for students to process, negotiate, and apply varied forms of knowledge in cohesive and iterative activities;
4. provide many opportunities for students to work collaboratively, to share and to negotiate with other students who have diverse ways of experiencing this knowledge;
5. support the learners aspirations to grow and to transform their life circumstances by affirming their personal agency, their capacities to make choices, and respecting their individual and social identities and motivations; and
6. utilize various forms of authentic formative assessment to help students clarify the learning goals, to articulate their personal learning goals, and to provide them with feedback to better control their own learning.

Educational reform must transform our schools into powerful learning environments. The adoption of these features in our school system is not an easy process to facilitate. It is difficult because the practices of teachers and activities of students in the classrooms and schools are actually sanctioned by explicit and implicit regulatory processes that limit the options of teachers and students.

One prevailing constraint to transformation is the privileging of traditional pedagogies for classroom instruction. The core features of powerful learning environments can be encountered in varied types of experiences in classrooms. But they are also found in informal and nonformal activities and practices based in communities, places of work, and even in the virtual spaces of the internet. These learning environments outside the classroom can provide more authentic, more contextualized experiences that support complex learning. Thus, it makes no sense to completely privilege formal classroom instruction over the learning activities in alternative learning systems both in and outside schools.

The combination of creative and flexible forms of alternative learning systems will best provide access to powerful lifelong learning opportunities to as many diverse learners as possible. Filipino students are very diverse in their prior experiences and knowledge, social-economic circumstance, geographic location, and individual learner characteristics. We need to match the students’ diversity with an equal measure of diversity in our pedagogical approaches and learning environments.

We now know that the one-size-fits-all approach is most harmful to highly diverse student populations. Thus, our schools and teachers should be allowed to explore diverse approaches to helping our students attain the desired learning competencies.

Yet our educational reforms have still focused primarily on the formal school systems and the traditional curricular and pedagogical forms. The explicit and implicit educational regulatory bodies, including the accrediting bodies and professional regulatory agencies, have also limited the options and spaces for schools to experiment with these alternative learning systems.

We must acknowledge that there have been many attempts to apply the various learning-oriented reformist concepts, particularly in the basic education sector. As early as the late 1940s, there was already the community school movement that was a forerunner of the lifewide learning approach.

Project IMPACT, implemented in 1973, was a successful lifewide learning project that promoted learner empowerment and featured many key qualities of powerful learning in non-school activities. Perhaps the first coherent articulation of the need to refocus the goals of Philippine education came from the education NGOs like Education Forum, supported by the Association of Major Religious Superiors in the Philippines (AMRSP) in response to mass movement’s criticisms of the Philippine educational system during the 1960s and 1970s.

Remarkably, this articulation was developed from outside the DepED but eventually found itself expressed again in Projects BEAM and Strengthening Basic Education in the Visayas or STRIVE that are being administered by the DepED. Today, the goals of expanded functional literacy, transformational citizenship, and lifelong learning are fully enshrined in both the Philippine Education for All 2015 Plan and the BESRA.

These learning-oriented reform concepts are much less evident in the higher education sector.  Learning activities in most colleges and universities still embody traditional didactic approaches that transmit concepts and teach skills instead of developing competencies. This continues even as there are now equivalency and accreditation programs in CHED that recognize the knowledge and skills acquired by persons outside the college system.

Perhaps the University of the Philippines should assess itself against these observations. Indeed, the higher education system as a whole seems to be more focused on credentialing students rather than their acquisition of complex competencies. Although there are learning-oriented reform concepts that are alluded to in some colleges and universities, by and large, these concepts are not the guiding principles of reform efforts. And this is the point that we wish to emphasize. In educational systems that have been transformed successfully, the design and implementation of the reforms were guided by the strong purpose of improving student learning of the highest possible form. All specific reform activities such as designing alternative learning experiences, assessment systems, teacher development, educational technology, educational management processes are supportive of the core features of powerful learning environments.

Unfortunately in the Philippines, discourses on learning have remained in the margins. All the reforms suggested by the different major educational surveys, starting with the Monroe Survey, have all been based on some implicit discourse about how students learn. But the appreciation and understanding of such frameworks by our lead educational agencies, by our schools, and by the larger society have remained superficial. And the goals and processes of high level student learning have never become the key organizing and unifying frame of Philippine educational reforms.

Instead, in most contemporary discourses of education / reform has focused on crisis and relief, addressing poor inputs and gaps in the processes. The discourse is sometimes accompanied by simplistic arguments about how reform efforts relate to improving learning, such as what we saw in the DepEd’s fairly recent CyberEd proposal which was unwittingly premised on some of the most outdated principles of learning that are definitely inappropriate for young learners.

We strongly believe that the most enduring exemplar of the harmful effects of ignoring the discourses of learning can be seen in our educational system’s inability to meaningfully resolve the language of instruction issue.

When Reforms Don't Transform: Reflections on Philippine Education (Second Part in a Series)

UP Centennial Lecture; November 12, 2008 (DRAFT)
by Ma. Cynthia Rose B. Bautista, Allan B. I. Bernardo, and Dina Ocampo


Why Reforms Don’t Transform: Institutional Constraints

What would constrain these initiativesfrom taking root and rolling down to other parts of the country?  Although policy covers for decentralization and pedagogical reforms are in now place, a number of institutional factors constrain the scaling up and implementation of reform. We will cite only three at the level of DepEd--dependence on external initiatives; the pilot project mentality that we referred to as “education reform in a petri dish” and the culture of hierarchy and obeisance in DepEd.

What is clearly discernible in DepEd’s reform activities over the last twenty years is its almost exclusive dependence on foreign-assisted programs that have pilot-project components. It seems that reform activities were undertaken only as DepEd moved from one donor-funded project to another. It is important to ask whether this indeed is a question of finance because Project Impact has shown that costs can be reduced by as much as 50%.

It seems to us too that DepEd’s manner of undertaking reform is to projectize it and the Department’s idea of projectization is to pilot test the efficacy of reformist interventions on a limited scale. Fortunately, BEAM and TEEP pushed the limits of such experiments to cover a third of all elementary schools. Their experiences give credence to the argument that reform efforts are best when large scale, coordinated, context-sensitive, and sustained over time.

Waged at the margins of DepEd operations, the projectization of externally-induced education reform seems to have prevented the Department from directing the reform process. It does not seem to have fully embraced the tasks of processing the lessons of every reform project, drawing their implications, and planning how to scale up ideas that work. Instead, DepEd seems to have simply moved from one project to the next, without really fully connecting the projects to its larger reform agenda.

There is nothing wrong with treating the conceptualization and implementation of particular reform interventions as projects. In fact, this might be the way to focus the attention of units within DepEd on ways to achieve particular performance outcomes. Projectization becomes a problem for two reasons. First, when a mission as important as scaling up or sustaining reform is not undertaken without external prodding Second, when the bearers of institutional reform in the bureaucracy no longer vigorously exert efforts to sustain reform after project targets have been met.

The governance of DepEd is not only highly centralized, it is also extremely hierarchical. For instance, no policy or practice in the lower levels of the hierarchy may change or take place unless there is an explicit DepEd Memo from the central office that allows it. An example is the rather ridiculous scenario of schools rejecting much-needed donations from credible donors because of the absence of a DepEd Memo. This cultural mindset is undermining DepEd’s moves towards decentralization. Indeed, despite the success of SBM in both BEAM and TEEP and the proven capacity of school heads to supervise classroom construction and manage funds, there still prevails a general distrust of school heads and classroom teachers in the field.

The hierarchical culture is reinforced by a culture of obeisance that characterizes many of our bureaucracies including DepEd. Teachers, for instance, hardly complain about multiple tasks away from the classroom that include cooking for visits of officials from central or regional offices. The observation visitations of the higher-ups have actually been described as “bitbitations” that are fruit-ful and fish-ful. Nor would teachers argue on substantive issues. School heads, division superintendents, and regional directors, no matter how outspoken, tend to defer to those above them even if they are more experienced or knowledgeable on an issue. Such deference can kill initiative. There are hopeful signs, however, that the culture of obeisance is changing with SBM. Some officials decry the empowerment of school heads whom they think have become stubborn and arrogant. Why? Because school heads have begun to answer back, that is, they now argue their points.

The constraints to the transformation of our education landscape go beyond institutional, administrative, and cultural factors. Education Reforms will not transform unless we go back to fundamental questions about what education is and what it is for.

When Reforms Don't Transform: Reflections on Philippine Education

UP Centennial Lecture; November 12, 2008 (DRAFT)
by Ma. Cynthia Rose B. Bautista, Allan B. I. Bernardo, and Dina Ocampo

The Seasons of Education Reform: An Overview

The Philippines has had a long history of education reform. Although our education system evolved from a colonial cocoon, the American imperialist agenda nevertheless included a reformist seed. It made elementary education compulsory to enable mass participation in elections and thereby break the hold of the oligarchy. By so doing, it hoped to undermine the elitist educational system under Spain that left the Filipino masses unschooled.

However, transplanting an American education model into an oligarchic system that the Americans reinforced by co-opting the elite, did not result in egalitarian structures. Neither did it level the playing field in education. The education system in the early American colonial period supported prevailing inequities. Primary education was for the working class; secondary education for the middle class, and tertiary education for leaders and the economic elite who demanded the establishment of an American system of higher education. The creation of the University of the Philippines in 1908 satisfied this demand and capped the development of a three-tiered public education system which has morphed into our system today.

Despite its class bias and colonial orientation, the reformist seed planted in the early days of colonial education sprouted somewhat. It provided a means of social mobility for significant numbers of poor Filipinos/. It also produced critical and nationalist thinkers who pushed for social reforms in different periods of the 20th century.

The establishment of the public education system heralded a series of reform-oriented initiatives with progressive assumptions. Consider the 1925 Monroe Survey. Yale professor George Counts was part of this team. In October 1925, his assessment of the key problems of Philippine basic education sounded like the issues confronting our country today. Half of the children were outside the reach of schools. Pupil performance was generally low in subjects that relied on English although achievement in math and science was at par with the average performance of American school children.

Counts attributed these problems to the language of teaching in a culturally diverse colony. In fact, Counts bewailed the teaching of subjects in English in the absence of a lingua franca. He argued that this sacrificed “efficiency of instruction in the native tongue”. 

Counts also argued that the curriculum was not suited to the Filipino children of the 1920s.  They were handicapped by their reliance on experiences drawn from a civilization alien to them. Not only were they acquiring new ideas in a language not their own they were also studying under a curriculum borrowed directly from the United States using materials suited for American children. Their teachers were also professionally untrained. But the Monroe Survey’s severest criticism of the Philippine education system in 1925 was on its excessive centralized control which resulted in the uniform implementation of a Western curriculum throughout the archipelago.  For Counts, this “one-size-fits all” practice was utterly indefensible considering the great diversity of climate, occupation, and cultural traditions in the Philippines.

UP history professor Digna Apilado wrote that our public education had not always been centralized.  The American colonial government initially required municipalities and provinces to finance primary and secondary schools, respectively setting aside state funds only for the state university. Local primary schools briefly enjoyed a wide range of autonomy to design their curriculum and educational materials. However, they lost this freedom to innovate and respond to local needs because towns and provinces were too poor to defray the costs of free and compulsory schooling. The insular government was thus compelled to assume funding for

all three education levels.

Since 1925, various reviews have cited the same fundamental issues afflicting Philippine education . This prompted four leading educationists to facetiously say that the education landscape has not changed since colonial days.

We will not repeat the usual lamentations about persistent inequities and poor pupil performance. We will, however, cite two less known but nevertheless disturbing observations . The Basic Education Assistance for Mindanao or BEAM’s Region-Wide Assessment in Mathematics, Science, and English revealed that sample students in three Mindanao regions including ARMM had great difficulty with items requiring higher order thinking skills. In particular, the high school students in the sample were unable to apply concepts and reasoning to real life situations.

Equally distressing,  are comparisons of the country’s primary net enrolment and completion rates with those of other countries in Asia-Pacific. The 2008 World Bank education data show that Cambodia and Laos have higher primary net enrollment and completion rates than us. The contrast with our neighbors Indonesia and Malaysia is sharp. The two countries have primary enrollment and completion rates that are much higher than ours.

Although the same issues have persisted since the 1960s, a review of the last forty years, reveals significant changes within and outside our education institutions. The 1970 Presidential Commission to Survey Philippine Education, for instance, reorganized the educational system to address over-centralization and the mismatch between educational output and the country’s needs. Outside the education bureaucracy, the late UP professor Malu Doronila claimed that the NGOs and POs of the mass movement in the same period sought to address the irrelevance of education with “counter-education, literacy, and other community-based political education efforts”. Spanning the education spectrum, these initiatives included neighborhood daycare centers, alternative schools for special children, and farmer-scientist programs. Some of the education practices of these groups were eventually mainstreamed; the groups also participated in extensive networks of educators in and out of government.

Four broad education reform frameworks emerged in the last 20 years. Jointly led by Senator Angara and Congressman Padilla and implemented by a Technical Secretariat headed by former UP Chancellor Dionisia Rola, The Congressional Commission on Education or EDCOM proposed a comprehensive set of reforms on issues ranging from access and quality to language of instruction. It restructured the education system into DepEd, CHED, and TESDA. Subsequent plans drew from its analysis, frameworks and recommendations.

The Basic Education Sector Reform Agenda or the BESRA, DepEd’s latest reform framework is comprehensive and offers enough spaces for NGO and private sector networks outside the basic education bureaucracy to carve their respective niches in.

In addition to these frameworks, the country has two landmark policy covers affecting basic education: the transfer, at least in theory, of the governance of basic education to schools through the 2001 Governance of Basic Education Act; and the promulgation in 2006 of the National Competency-Based Teacher Standards which aims to develop higher thinking skills and learning competencies.

The last 40 years also saw at least one major DepEd-related reform project every three years on the average. This number excludes smaller DepEd projects and those undertaken by the more than 60 NGO and private sector groups, some of which are represented here today.

Initiatives that Bloomed

Reviewing the reform projects, we realized many of them planted seeds of hope that sprouted wonderfully in the areas where they were implemented. Project IMPACT, or the Project on INSTRUCTIONAL MANAGEMENT BY PARENTS, COMMUNITY AND TEACHERS) is an example. It was initiated as a practical intervention  to address overcrowding in Philippine public schools, as well as the lack of teachers, textbooks, and other learning materials. Its notable features include: the supervision of as many as 120 students by one teacher; the active role of parents and other community members; the community rather than school focus of learning, the help extended by other primary students who were trained to teach specific lessons to beginning students; and the option of students to learn by themselves  or with a friend, neighbor, or in small groups once language skills had been developed.

At 50% reduction in education costs, IMPACT students acquired higher levels of cognitive skills compared to those in regular schools. They also demonstrated better social and communication skills, a greater sense of commitment, and overall leadership potential. The staunch education reform advocate in the National Economic Development Authority or NEDA, Mr. Nap Imperial, validated these observations. Project IMPACT has been re-launched as e- IMPACT. What puzzled us though is why the effective IMPACT technology of the 1970s was not used to address Metro Manila’s overcrowded public schools.

Unlike Project IMPACT, BEAM and the Third Elementary Education Project or TEEP reflected scale. Together, they implemented School-Based Management or SBM in 40 of the country’s 188 divisions, affecting more than 12000 schools or as many as a third of Philippine public elementary schools. As practiced in the Philippines, SBM is a framework that integrates school governance with various school level inputs for achieving equitable access to quality education. This includes changes in perspectives on learning, pedagogy, and community participation. BEAM and TEEP differed in many respects/ but they had remarkable outcomes.

BEAM aims to improve the access and education quality in three regions in Mindanao. Its underlying learning philosophy assumes the active construction by learners of their own knowledge through interactions with their natural and social environment. BEAM asserts that higher order thinking skills develop in flexible and cooperative learning classroom environments rather than in classrooms characterized by a one-way transmission of knowledge to passive learners. This explains BEAM’s focus on training in learner-centered management, teaching, and learning materials development.

The average scores of sample learners in the BEAM areas increased significantly across subjects through the years particularly in higher-order thinking skills. With regards to the enabling conditions for effective classroom learning, BEAM has established a management training system utilizing appropriate learning systems for Regional, Division, District, and School managers; effective teacher training; and a system of producing culturally-sensitive learning materials. BEAM has also forged partnerships with Teacher Education Institutions or TEIs and the National Educators Academy of the Philippines or NEAP.

In contrast to BEAM’s philosophical coherence TEEP was less mindful of its learning philosophy, although its more pragmatic and eclectic thrust incorporated some of BEAM’s social constructivist notions. The decentralization objective and research-identified determinants of desirable student outcomes rather than specific learning theories guided the formulation of TEEP. Hence, civil works and goods procurement were significant components of its reform program.

SBM iterated in TEEP. Since the consultant who fleshed out SBM in the ADB report on decentralized basic education management, joined TEEP subsequently TEEP did not have to invent the wheel. The number of schools that adopted SBM expanded exponentially within three years to all 8600 schools in 23 TEEP divisions. Like BEAM, TEEP’s SBM operationalization included the formulation of 5-year School Improvement Plans together with parents, communities, and other stakeholders. TEEP differed from BEAM however, because it drilled down SBM cash grants or MOOE to schools and its school heads supervised classroom construction within a 90-day cycle without any reported anomaly.

The student outcomes in the TEEP divisions are impressive. Although they started out with lower average scores in 2002, they consistently outperformed schools in provinces that were less poor. They also ranked as well, if not better, than schools in non-poor divisions, a performance TEEP schools sustained beyond project completion in 2006. Moreover, systematic targeting of disadvantaged schools also narrowed the gap between monograde and multigrade schools in TEEP divisions.

Reflecting on BEAM and TEEP, we strongly believe that combining the features of these projects is the fastest way to achieve the BESRA goal of implementing SBM nationwide. BEAM’s philosophically coherent educational interventions  would have a much higher probability of taking root if TEEP’s SBM strategy is used to till the soil. This means that in addition to community and LGU participation we propose the giving of direct accountability for SBM implementation to division offices and the drilling down of funds to schools. These would prepare systems for the shift in learning paradigms so that BEAM initiatives can grow and spread faster.  (First in a couple of parts.  For a detailed and complete content or transcription in acrobat format, just click this link, When Reforms Don't Transform)

Reading 101: What Teachers and Parents Should Know About (First of Six Parts)

Reading 101 Part 2Teaching reading is a hugely complicated task. Although children go through a series of predictable steps on their journey to becoming readers, many things can derail them, such as having inadequate exposure to language at home or having a learning disability. Teachers who know the art and science of teaching reading, though, are able to provide skillful, effective reading instruction, and can help students who need it overcome obstacles to becoming readers. (digested from Reading 101: What You Should Know)

Print Awareness: An Introduction
By: Texas Education Agency (2001)

Children with print awareness can begin to understand that written language is related to oral language. They see that, like spoken language, printed language carries messages and is a source of both enjoyment and information. Children who lack print awareness are unlikely to become successful readers. Indeed, children's performance on print awareness tasks is a very reliable predictor of their future reading achievement.

Most children become aware of print long before they enter school. They see print all around them, on signs and billboards, in alphabet books and storybooks, and in labels, magazines, and newspapers. Seeing print and observing adults' reactions to print help children recognize its various forms.

The ability to understand how print works, does not emerge magically and unaided. This understanding comes about through the active intervention of adults and other children who point out letters, words, and other features of the print that surrounds children. It is when children are read to regularly, when they play with letters and engage in word games, and later, when they receive formal reading instruction, that they begin to understand how the system of print functions; that is, print on a page is read from left to right and from top to bottom; that sentences start with capital letters and end with periods, and much, much more.

As they participate in interactive reading with adults, children also learn about books – author's and illustrators names, titles, tables of content, page numbers, and so forth. They also learn about book handling – how to turn pages, how to find the top and bottom on a page, how to identify the front and back cover of a book, and so forth. As part of this learning, they begin to develop the very important concept "word" – that meaning is conveyed through words; that printed words are separated by spaces; and that some words in print look longer (because they have more letters) than other words.

Books with predictable and patterned text can play a significant role in helping children develop and expand print awareness. Predictable and patterned books, as the names implies, are composed of repetitive or predictable text, for example:
Two cats play on the grass.
Two cats play together in the sunlight.
Two cats play with a ball.
Two cats play with a toy train.
Two cats too tired to play.

These kind of texts when handled properly by the reading teacher or tutor will help pupils retain letter and word patterns.  Most often, the illustrations in such books are tied closely to the text, in that the illustrations represent the content words that change from page to page.

As they hear and participate in the reading of the simple stories found in predictable and patterned books, children become familiar with how print looks on a page. They develop book awareness and book-handling skills, and begin to become aware of print features such as capital letters, punctuation marks, word boundaries, and differences in word lengths.
Awareness of print concepts provides the backdrop against which reading and writing are best learned.

Excerpted from: Guidelines for Examining Phonics and Word Recognition Programs, Texas Reading Initiative, Texas Education Agency (2002).

Print Awareness
Children who have an awareness of print understand that the squiggly lines on a page represent spoken language. They understand that when adults read a book, what they say is linked to the words on the page, rather than to the pictures.

Children with print awareness understand that print has different functions depending on the context in which it appears – for example, menus list food choices, a book tells a story, a sign can announce a favorite restaurant or warn of danger. Print awareness is understanding that print is organized in a particular way – for example, knowing that print is read from left to right and top to bottom. It is knowing that words consist of letters and that spaces appear between words. Print awareness is a child's earliest introduction to literacy.

In a perfect world, all students would begin school with print awareness firmly in place. But the world is not a perfect place. So let's take a look at how teachers can help students to develop or increase print awareness.

You may like to continue reading and view the next:

•  Reading 101 Part 2
• \Reading 101 Part 3
• Reading 101 Part 4
• Reading 101 Part 5
• Reading 101 (Last Part)

Enhancing Character Education in Our Schools

By Gilbert M. ForbesDepEd Quezon, CALABARZON 

Without the virtues that make up a good character, no individual can live happily and no society can function effectively.  Without good character, the Filipino people will not survive the onset of globalization.  With the onset of the so many controversies hammering different government institutions today, there is no other good thing to do but to look back and evaluate the moral caliver that we have and what can be done about it.

Its true that character is caught not taught but there are now numerous strategies how we could design an effective character education in our schools following and implementing the curriculum already at hand so as to slowly correct whatever there is that could still be corrected.

Education and Its Relation to the Level of Ones Political Understanding

Looking at the way, the common people easily succumbed to somebody who could be undeserving of their blind loyalty and the way they elected undeserving politicians only reflects their low level of political awareness and of the ability to think and reason.  This disparity in the way the masa and the ilustrado think could be said to have a cultural and historical origin.  However, it is also wise to look into the way Filipinos were educated.

Bermudez (2001) explained that Filipinos- both poor and rich- have attached the lowest priority to public education.  While he explained that everyone is to blame, the culpability of the middle class and the rich is much larger since they have always been in a position to make a difference with their talents and resources.  Nationalist Renato Constantino says that there’s a sort of mis-education that tends to perpetuate the status quo.  Instead of developing a productive and truly nationalist citizen due to fear of breeding leftist tendencies, what has been developed was an apathetic fellow with a poor grasp of what the future shall be and the worst, a person vulnerable to manipulation of selfish and power greedy individuals.

Educational Committee report acknowledges the weakness of the educational system when it stated in 1992 that our elementary and high schools are failing to teach the competence the average citizen needs to become responsible, productive and self-fulfilling. Recent UNESCO statistics showed that the Filipinos are among the most schooled in the developing world.  The Filipino adult has over seven years of schooling.  Yet in comparative international tests measuring academic achievement, the Philippines ranks among the lowest in the developing world.  The inevitable conclusion is that Filipino children go to school but not learn as much as they should, or worse, some of them do not learn at all (Miguel and Barsaga 1997).  About 30% of our population by not finishing elementary school is in danger of reverting to illiteracy.  Thus we still have 2.8 million illiterate adults (Gonzales 2000) while functionally illiterates are about 13 million given the literacy rate of 93.4% in 1990. For a decade, major reforms have been instituted by the government including landmark legislation but there are still much to be seen.  A problem that is even more serious than quality is the problem of gaining access to it. With only around 87% participation rate, reaching EFA goals by 2015 remains to be elusive and so involvement of every sectors of the society is badly needed.  Not to mention the continuously evolving new negative value systems prevalent among our youths and even adults which all pose a danger to the society as we usher in to the 21^st century.

If this is the face of education, what could we expect from our citizens then?  Political analysts and educated individuals rich or poor therefore shouldn’t expect for fast political maturity among the so-called class D and E society.  They could only expect for more if they do their part and help other than leaving the government alone.

New Curriculum Direction in Values Education and other Allied Subjects

           

Not only education is seen as the problem that tends to obstruct our quest for a united and progressive democratic nation but also the prevailing negative values that we share and practice. This is where we could start, by directing our efforts to arrive on a new values education curriculum especially woven to correct our damage culture, new positive values and traditions that are within the grasp of positive and traditional Filipino minds. Negative values presently common like bahala na attitude, bukas na lang, pakikisama and the Filipino version of hospitality, problem oriented, solution oriented, ningas cogon, utang na loob, palakasan or padreno system, puwede na ‘yan attitude, mañana habit, crab mentality, individualism, materialism, low regard to manual labor, superstition, political patronage, strong family ties falling on the negative side of opportunism, and gambling should be change to a positive and far more better one.

We also need to direct our values education curriculum to strengthen positive values that we already have especially those which are slowly being eroded by modernism e.g., religiosity, high regard and respect to elders and immediate leaders within the community, environmentalism, positive close family ties, simplicity, patience, determination, frugality, industry, honesty and hard work.

At an early stage, values education as a separate and independent subject with the advantage of being integrated to other allied subjects for a stronger effect must also dwell on developing genuine love of country, public service, loyalty and integrity, discipline, human rights, positive political orientation, and the spirit of entrepreneurship. Although, moral values are learned early in the homes, these learning could be considered as a good investment for educators to start on a values education that are not only learned but also goes beyond the heart of every individual thus creating a far reaching effect within each one’s soul. 

As author of the best selling classic Educating for Character Thomas Lickoma explains that character is very important.  He mentioned in his book, Character Matters that Greek philosopher Heraclitus said it simply:  “Character is destiny.”  Character shapes the destiny of an individual person.  It shapes the destiny of a whole society.  “Within the character of the citizen,” Cicero said, “lies the welfare of the nation.

           

Quoting Patricia B. Licuanan, if something is done in this direction, if moral education is given more emphasis, in a short time as it takes for a child to go through his formative years, the educational system of the country shall have done its part in re-shaping the moral caliber of the Filipino people.  Such a decisive move could give us all reason to hope for a better future for our country and people.