Playing with Fire
Progressive Policy
By Gonzalo Duque
LET’S salute President GMA for her progressive policy on education and other programs of government that all of us hope would lead to the country’s unimpeded socio-economic national development.
She has ok’d and is expected to preside over the summit meeting of the country’s top educators on January 31 to Feb.1 at the Manila Hotel.
Flash Back: in a series of meetings with officials of the Philippine Association of Colleges and Universities of which this humble representation is president, we made several inputs for the upgrading of the Philippine educational system.
In all our conversations with PGMA, mostly off-the-cuff, we zeroed in on what most everyone had been hoping for college graduates who can’t speak English or their thoughts responsibly and understandably. And to think that they are college graduates!
No less than Secretary Jesli Lapus has deplored this state of affairs.
And so – here we’re mee-ting to tackle the problems at their very roots. Four gov’t agencies stand out to be grilled and masticated like marshmallows, namely, TESDA, CHED, DEPed and PRC. You are familiar with all those abbreviations, aren’t you?
Stakeholders will pore into the existing curricula, teaching systems, budget, reported corruption in the different education offices that have made a mockery of education as the noblest (sic) profession and all that.
The summit is expected to come up with a wholistic approach to upgrade and improve the quality of education in the country. A broad range of issues is expected to crop up so that they would be synchronized and harmonized and do away with overlapping of functions and ensure effecftiveness.
As of now, the afore cited agencies are each preoccupied with their own “small worlds” unmindful of the larger picture.
It’s time to meet the problems head-on and produce globally competitive and highly employable graduates.
This view, by the way, dominated our meetings with PACU officials in Cebu recently, and we’re happy to report that all of them concurred with our ideas.
As all, if not most, of you know, we are overseer of a countryside university, and we speak the truth forthrightly and candidly based on our experience and life in the university known for its search, commitment and exposition of the truth – the Lyceum Northwestern University.
In our role as PACU president, we unhesitatingly express and articulate the grief, grievances and wishes of education leaders all over the islands that beat to the drums of the country’s much-needed reforms in education. They require a boldness of heart, we know, a firm resolve and all-out if not total measures so that much needed reforms and innnovations will be realized.
And we must thank our pangulo for her liberal spirit so that the veil of ignorance and superstition in our country will be completely lifted and enable our schools to produce great graduates.
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NOTES: Narcissistic officials. If Marcos were alive today, he would order the Public Works and Tourism people to remove those unsightly billboards of politicians’ faces in many corners of the streets of the city. The excuse of these politicians for exhibiting their not too handsome faces is because they were welcoming visitors of the city during the long Christmas vacation.
Ok sana kung gwapo yong mga mukha tulad ni Mayor Al. We do not know with the others.
Most of our friends are nauseated. De-hins naman daw pogi.
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We committed a small blunder in our last column when we wrote that our niece, Ade Hammersheind, daughter of sister Dr. Luz D. Hammersheind, is enrolled at Georgetown University in New York City. The correct one is Georgetown, Washington, D.C. Sorry.
(Readers may reach columnist at punch.sunday@gmail.com. For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/playing-with-fire/ For reactions to this column, click “Send MESSAGES, OPINIONS, COMMENTS” on default page.)
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