General education and a case of CHEd’s misplaced priorities
The Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) has shared its intent to lessen the number of required General Education (GE) units in college. From the current 36 to a prescribed 18 units, the reframed GE curriculum will include five mandated subjects: professional communication; global trends and emerging technology; data, evidence, and ethics in a knowledge society; Rizal and Philippine studies; and labor education.
The proposed revision lacks particular core subjects such as ethics, philosophy, art appreciation, and natural sciences, among many others, and has since drawn criticism from student groups, faculty staff, and universities alike.
Education for what?
While a petition for a revised GE curriculum stems from a desire to produce employment-ready graduates, this does not align with the type of education they seek to impart, according to the Ateneo de Manila University. “This move puts in question the kind of education we are advancing that moves the lever away from holistic human development, which is long-term, to one that caters only to work demands, which is short-term.”
Additionally, the university shared contents from a position letter sent by Ateneo’s Vice President for Higher Education Maria Luz C Vilches, PhD to Hon. Shirley Agrupis, chair of the commission. Among the many points the letter brings up is an argument against CHEd’s assertion that reducing GE units will address curriculum redundancies between senior high school and higher education.
For her, while there are ‘redundancies’ in title or name, the quality and depth of content vary greatly. “Repetition is essential to deepen understanding and application of knowledge. Thus, repetition in this sense, in an incremental manner, is not a redundancy… Even with the current set-up of so-called ‘redundancy’, students still have a lot of catch-up work from senior high school to college,” adds Vilches.
She also explains that the point of having GE curricula in college is to foster holistic learning on top of our specializations—halving it essentially goes against that. “The assumption is that [general education] is supposed to be for the education of the whole person. In which case, it should be about a strong grounding in the liberal arts. How can critical thinking and holistic learner development be achieved with the radical excision of courses in the humanities and the social sciences?”
The intrinsic value of core subjects
Meanwhile, Jose Mario D. De Vega, who has instructed in schools such as the National University of the Philippines and the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, explains the intrinsic value of these core subjects.
“Philosophy, critical pedagogy, the arts, music, and humanities are not mere subjects. They are necessary tools the youth need not only to learn and grow as individuals but also to cultivate what is intrinsically human. To reduce—or to ultimately eliminate—GE subjects is to demolish the very elements that make us human.”
The Alliance of Concerned Teachers-Philippines also voiced its concerns on the matter.
“The market-driven, job-centric framework of the Reframed General Education Curriculum Component (RGECC), which treats Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) as merely factories of employable workers rather than shapers of socially conscious citizens, does not respond to our people’s needs in a world of wars, genocide, and inequality where we need more, not less GE.”
They also explain that this could also potentially affect many faculty members, around 60,000 to 90,000, based on their estimates.
“Our experience with the 2014 GE reduction shows that the government was unable, unwilling, and incapable of totally shielding teachers from displacement, load reduction, and de facto salary reduction,” they add.
Misplaced priorities?
According to Senator Loren Legarda, who is co-chair of the Second Congressional Commission on Education (Edcom 2), as well as the chair of the Senate committee on higher, technical, and vocational education, “The curriculum review process must be future-proof. Evidence shows that updating certain policies, standards, and guidelines can take more than a decade under the current system.”
“In a period of rapid technological and economic transformation, this delay is unacceptable,” she adds. “A regular and programmed review cycle must be institutionalized to ensure that graduates enter the workforce with relevant and competitive qualifications.”
While it is true that our current education system must be reviewed and revised to ensure workplace readiness, we must also ensure that what is being added or removed is the correct thing.
In the face of an employment landscape threatened by artificial intelligence (AI) and job shortages, the solution isn’t to throw graduates with similar skills and competencies to employers, but to build well-rounded individuals who can offer something different.
Not to mention, college isn’t only a place where students can build toward their specializations. It’s an environment where they can find who and what they truly want to be. Exposure to the correct core subject may even lead to a student changing courses and finding new passions.
And aren’t we forgetting that needlessly removing GE subjects should be the least of CHEd’s concerns? What about the lack of facilities, textbooks, and classrooms for public schools? What about the sharp contrast in educational quality between public and private schools? What about the fact that the K12 program wasn’t properly implemented, and students still need college degrees to simply end up with jobs with small wages, when that was the point of having senior high school?
College is doing fine. Core curriculum was never the issue.
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