Education in the Philippines

They're planning to add two more years to the ten years of education before a student can proceed to college. They believe a 12-year basic education will meet global standards of education. Why only now? I'm not saying it's too late but even if they add twelve or twenty more years to basic education, this is no guarantee that our students will achieve academic excellence.

There is no excellence if teachers are not excellent, well-paid and inspired. A mediocre teacher teaching in a rotting school with flawed textbooks will only produce incompetents. The government now has to know which education problems to fiercely deal with first. I am sure corruption has been killing our already poor educational system.

While the government is trying to fix problems I say to students: LEARN AND GET EDUCATED OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM.... Are parents and TV doing their part as educators? I don't think so.

"Third World Pa Rin."

Almost everything we want to know about everything can be accessed now via the Intenet. Students certainly have no excuse nowadays to claim they cannot know enough about their courses and subjects. But still I have yet to meet anyone with astonishing brilliance.

Entertainers we have awfully a lot here. And the obvious dearth of excellent scientists, experts, field specialists, creative writers and thinkers is the result of something corrupt in our educational system or perhaps, our present culture as a whole.

We heavily prefer singing, dancing, entertaining and playing money games to studying, learning, writing, appreciating and mastering the arts, humanities, history, literature, science and other disciplines. We somehow look quick towards where the moolah is. This is shamelessly shallow. (A tongue twister there.) And look where we have remained. In the dumps. Overtaken by other Asian nations. Third world pa rin.