What if…
Respected academics have engaged in the debates about curricular reform at the secondary level. I appreciate their effort and insights, but I suspect they are investing time in a contest over the best way to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The Department of Education (DepEd) and the legislators are not wrong in wanting to construct a Strengthened Senior High School (SSHS) curriculum. They have concluded that the original version, guided by the law establishing K-12 (Republic Act No. 10533), has failed to deliver the expected results. Since this design was largely their work and DepEd was responsible for the larger share of SHS enrollment and its results, we must give serious consideration to their confession of failure.
Neither are the critics completely wrong in opposing SSHS. Objections come from concerns about educational goals. Speaking from different disciplines, the proponents use different conceptual tools, methodologies, and rules of evidence. They will tend to support their respective academic principles and interests. While united in opposing SSHS, they are divided on curricular priorities and processes.
We are thus likely to suffer heated disputes on broad issues regarding the relative value of alternative educational goals. Should SHS prepare students for higher education, employment, entrepreneurship, lifelong learning, or the cultivation of core moral, ethical, and civic virtues? Each has its advocates with equally meritorious objectives. Indeed, RA 10533 covers all of them.
But DepEd’s own diagnosis of the SHS maladies and its recommended prescriptions do not cure the conditions that constrain both pro- and anti-SSHS advocates—too many required goals without enough time to achieve all of them. DepEd discovered that the original curriculum was “overly fragmented, with too many subjects, limited elective options, and inadequate instructional time,” but then reduced SSHS class hours. Without relief from time constraints, DepEd must rely on redefining subjects, slicing and dicing coverage, and branding objectives with favorite buzzwords: “critical thinking,” “holistic,” “transdisciplinary,” and “systemic.”
We get little assurance of remedies for the fundamental SHS problems: “insufficient infrastructure, a lack of specialized teachers, and weak industry partnerships.” Curricular tinkering becomes a substitute for basic reforms, without which the new design will work no better than the old.
Curricular reform takes a long time to produce results. It must be bulletproofed against neglect or revision by future decision-makers. Otherwise, curricular redesign becomes a way to show activity but postpone accountability, a strategy to kick the can down the road for someone else to pick up later, after the design architects have left the scene.
Meanwhile, teachers and students unfairly bear the burden of reform. Bureaucrats discount the difficulty of “organizing learning resources” when such resources are inadequate, or “integrating” academic content, which requires mastery of the disciplines being integrated. Electives do not solve the problem of fragmented learning; they shift responsibility for ensuring curricular coherence, not to the faculty but to students, who have different reasons for choosing their subjects.
A private school teacher has sought a Supreme Court temporary restraining order against the implementation of the SSHS because the change would diminish his regular teaching load, his overload compensation, and his expected income. Many others in private education will find themselves in this situation. Protecting paychecks is not really the primary purpose of curricular reform. But their case would be stronger with evidence that their institutions have followed the original curriculum and delivered results acceptable to their students and their parents. If so, why punish them with disruptive changes whose success cannot be assured?
A curriculum is largely a paper promise. Hubris shows in the guarantee of a general science course that will prepare students for “the challenges of living and working in a rapidly changing and advancing Philippine society.” Artificial intelligence has made us even more uncertain about future challenges the country may face. What if the government simply set modest, measurable SHS targets, while giving schools the flexibility and the assistance they need to improve their management of the curriculum they already know?
We cannot predict the future, but we know DepEd’s biggest problem now. It is not in SHS but upstream, in the primary grades—the 90 percent learning poverty among Grade 5 children. What if DepEd promises that within the next six years, 75 percent or 50 percent of the children in Grade 5 will demonstrate literacy in one language instead of illiteracy in two or three languages?
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Edilberto C. de Jesus is professor emeritus at the Asian Institute of Management.
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