Help for public schools

WHILE Department of Education touts the K to 12 system as the next best thing that the country can do for our future generations, it sorely misses out on one major factor that developed countries are doing for their generations – access to information and technology.

It’s bad enough that our government is still grappling with decade-old issues like shortage of classrooms, books and qualified teachers, but it is experimenting as well with the use of mother tongue as medium of instruction for our pupils, instead of English, that which transformed Filipinos to be one of the most literate in the Asian region from 50s to the 60s.

So hard as we try to put some sense into the educational system at a time when the world is surging ahead with a global stage and economy in mind, there is really indeed very little that our national government can do. But, there is something that local governments can do to mitigate and advance the interests of our young generation in order to be more competent and knowledgeable in addition to what our traditional books and educational system teach.

Public schools don’t have access to tablets, computers and Internet, that which are already considered primary tools in education by global standards. (Even the few computers in schools reportedly being carted away are computers used by school officials for administrative purposes not for the pupils’ advancement).

Local governments, using the bottom-up budgeting, should begin to allocate more funds for acquisition of computers for their libraries and access to Internet at the very least. Then the overseas and successful alumni of our public schools should actively organize to provide the basic tools for information technology. Time to give back to the community. Without these tools, the benefits promised by the K to 12 system will come to naught.

 

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The BBL bogey

IT is becoming increasingly clear that the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) is really a battle between the Lower House and the Senate.  As things stand now, the law designed to give pseudo state powers to a Moro faction in Mindanao seems headed to a resounding win in the House of Representatives. Why?  Because the majority of our congressmen are puppets of Malacanang, a staunch BBL supporter from the very start.  But the Senate, always known to be independent-minded and hard to manipulate (supposedly?), just couldn’t be swayed that easily by the Palace. Now, in the unlikely event that the Senate would cave in (you know the reason, of course), the BBL will still have to contend with the people’s will when it is put to a vote through the plebiscite process.

And if there should be cheating as to ensure BBL victory at the polls, what price peace?

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