Give our teachers and our children time to learn

A school calendar can be shortened by decree. Understanding cannot. The Department of Education’s shift toward a three-term school calendar raises a question that deserves more than assurances of efficiency: Can Filipino children master everything the curriculum demands within the time they are given? The reform promises a more efficient academic year, but efficiency in scheduling is not necessarily efficiency in learning. A calendar may be shortened by policy; understanding must still be earned.

Whether the program gives children sufficient time to learn is a question that ought to be answered with evidence, not assurances. Can a 10 year-old in Samar or Cebu master in a compressed period what previously required more time and was already, by many accounts, imperfectly taught?

Until credible assessments establish that students are learning effectively under the revised schedule, certainty would be premature. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a government introducing a new program must be in want of results, and it is equally true that speed, being easily announced and easily measured, is too readily mistaken for progress.

A child’s mind does not behave like a conveyor belt, though policy so often supposes it does. The pupil who has not understood fractions will not understand them any sooner because the bell has rung early. Instead, the pupil is carried, uncomprehending, into decimals, and from there into that gentle fog in which children learn to nod without knowing. Each lesson arrives before the previous one has finished its work, and the gaps accumulate quietly, like silt in a river.

Consider next who must make this compression bearable. Somewhere tonight, a public school teacher sits at her kitchen table beneath a single bulb, a stack of ungraded papers at her elbow and a half-finished lesson plan glowing on her phone. Tomorrow, she must stand before dozens of children, each with different needs, different difficulties, and different capacities to understand what she has been tasked to teach.

Beyond the classroom await reports, forms, school programs, and other administrative responsibilities, each demanding a share of the hours she might otherwise spend preparing lessons or helping a struggling pupil. A teacher cannot teach effectively while drowning in paperwork.

Some teachers even spend their own money on classroom materials or help pupils whose families cannot afford basic necessities. Such generosity deserves admiration, but it should never become an excuse for institutional neglect.

It would be comforting to call these difficulties unfortunate accidents of budgets and timing, but that would overlook the responsibility of those who design and implement education policy. The roots of the problem lie partly in a persistent habit of leadership that confuses announcement with achievement and treats accountability as an inconvenience rather than a duty.

International assessments have repeatedly raised concerns about Filipino students’ proficiency in reading, mathematics, and science. These results should prompt more than another announcement of reform. They should compel us to ask whether our policies address the actual causes of poor learning or merely rearrange the conditions under which it occurs.

Some educators may seek better opportunities abroad, while others remain because of their commitment to the children they teach. Their dedication is admirable, but a system that survives by exhausting its teachers is not demonstrating resilience. It is borrowing against a future it cannot repay.

The remedy begins with an honest evaluation of the three-term calendar and its effects on actual learning. The Department of Education must establish whether students are mastering essential competencies, whether instructional time remains sufficient and whether schools possess the resources necessary to implement the schedule. Teachers must have a meaningful role in that evaluation, not merely receive instructions after decisions have been made. Administrative requirements that contribute little to classroom instruction should be reduced, while educators deserve adequate compensation, manageable workloads, and the materials necessary to teach effectively. Officials, in turn, must be held accountable for measurable outcomes rather than the mere implementation of their programs.

None of this means that education should resist every change. It means that reform must serve the learner rather than the timetable. Children develop at different paces, teachers need sufficient time to explain and assess, and genuine understanding cannot be manufactured by compressing a schedule.

Education should not be a race against the calendar. The purpose of schooling is not to move children through lessons as quickly as possible, but to ensure that they carry knowledge with them when the lessons are over. Our children do not need to be hurried. They need to be taught.

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Andrey Kim G. Malabed, 18, an Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering student studying at Mariano Marcos State University.