Not yet ready for K+12

By Johanne Margarette R. Macob 

THE K to 12 is coming in June; no stopovers, no delays. I am not an expert to comment on the issue. I am neither a teacher nor a parent who will be affected by the change. I am not speaking on behalf of anyone. I am simply writing as a citizen, a student who is about to graduate from college.

K to 12, for everybody’s sake, adds two academic years to the original 10-year elementary and secondary education program. As I’ve learned from a recent conference held in Lingayen, it will not add new subjects to the curriculum, but will reformulate some. It will loosen up the curriculum. For instance, a lesson that needs to be taught for an hour will be relaxed and be taught for more hours, say three hours. Thus, according to the pros, this will relax students and will make education (more) fun.

The program was proposed in October 2010 by the Department of Education headed by

Armin Luistro. Until now, the bill containing this proposal is still pending in Congress. Despite the proposal’s dormant state in the Lower House, authorities have been announcing that K to 12 program will certainly start this June, beginning with kindergarten for all five-year olds and the start of the 7th grade for those who will finish 6th grade this current school year. I won’t question the benefits of the program they’ve cited.

However, my question is why didn’t they address the other side of the coin, the disadvantages?

K to 10 has been our curriculum. I was educated in that manner and I never would want to be educated in other means. Yes, our education program is not perfect. It has a lot of flaws but I don’t think that one of those is the supposed inadequate academic years. We were not pressured way back grade school and high school days. We had subjects that are just sufficient enough to develop our holistic beings. Our problems were not the subjects per se or the time allotted to such. What hampered us from learning much more is the fact that our school had insufficient facilities. There were not enough books, not enough classrooms, not enough teaching instruments.

Sadly, that is still the dilemma of today. Why not deal with these issues first before situating K to 12 in the education scene? K to 12 will not resolve such issues; worse, it might aggravate the plight.

Moreover, any major change in policy needs consultation with all the major stakeholders. The proponents of the K to 12 should have held discussions first with the education ‘stakeholders’ such as the teachers and parents. They might have talked in the ‘government’ but how about with the other key people? Why not consider the additional responsibility they are about to give to the parents? And why don’t they have a strategic plan first to hire and pay more teachers well? In addition, how about the trainings for teachers who are about to undergo a different kind of system? It has been 15 months since the proposal but as far as I know, there were rare, if any, consultations with the parents and teachers.

And yes, what is envisioned is that graduates of K to 12 will already be legible for employment, but will employers prefer them over college grads? If today even college grads are having a hard time finding fair jobs, what assurance can they give that there will be immediate jobs for the K to 12 graduates? There are not enough jobs, why not focus on this issue first? It all boils down to one thing: parents, still, have to send their children to universities even after K to 12 for a better chance of employment. Two years is two additional years of expense.

June is just a few months away. I understand the good aims of the program. It will, as they say, produce more mature and competent persons. Kudos to that. However, in our context now wherein numerous social problems need more attention, why do we have to bring forth such issue? Lastly, two additional years will not necessarily equate to enhanced curriculum. I hope the government focuses on quality rather than on quantity. The Philippines may need K to 12 but certainly, not now; it is not yet capable to do so.

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