The Failure of not failing

“Be proud you’re a teacher. The future depends on you.”

The result of the recent National Elementary Assessment Tests that aims to gauge the preparedness of elementary schools graduates for high school education indicates a decline in the competency of elementary school teachers. Less than 10 percent of the students passed the test. This prompted the Department of Education to implement “bridge programs” for the students, and to provide seminars to help teachers meet at least the minimum requirement for effective instruction in core subjects.

The high school and the college level teachers are not doing well too. Our high school student’s performance is one of the worst, if not the worst in South East Asia while our tertiary education is way, way behind the ASEAN Standard.

It is true that overcrowding, unjust compensation of the teachers, and lack of school facilities are the main reasons for our educational system’s poor performance—all are given. But there’s one contributing factor that affects the quality of our education, it is the quality of our educator—teachers who don’t deserve to be teachers become teachers.

There is this negative Filipino college culture of treating Education as the course of last resort—the home of the frustrated. Education courses are the catch basin of college students who are not able to meet the required quotient for the more “prestigious” courses like architecture, engineering, accounting, etc. This is disheartening for it shows the utter disregard for the importance, esteem and the dignity of the teaching profession. The teachers are the foundations of educations. No matter how elaborate a structure is if its foundations are weak, it will not stand.

Another factor is that colleges are not as stringent when it comes to education courses as they should be. Tertiary educational institutions are not only there to provide education but they are also there to make sure that those who graduate deserves to graduate. Ponder these figures from 2005: Only 25 percent of elementary education graduates passed the Licensure Examinations. For the high school education graduates the figure was 25.9 percent. Every year colleges and universities produce enough graduates to fill our school’s demand. But despite the quantity of teachers they produce, the dismal passing rate of these graduates in the licensure examinations still creates a shortage for qualified teachers.

Universities and colleges can contribute to the reversing of the deterioration of the quality of our educators by raising the standard of their admission and retention requirements for education courses. And lastly, education students must realize that unless they pass the licensure examinations their degrees are next to worthless.

Reflect on this passage from an editorial in one of the nation’s leading paper:

“The current crop of teachers can be made to undergo crash courses and additional training to raise levels of competence.

(But) Reversing the slide in the quality of teachers, however, will have to start from gradeschool.