Philippine Basic Education

What a real pleasant surprise to see this in my mailbox when I got home today. It was a copy of the #1 New Release in Amazon books on Education Administration. In this book, Brian Butler speaks the hard truth about what we are currentlly getting wrong in basic education. Every student deserves a good education. That is what "gifted" really means. And as Brian Butler strongly states in the title of his book, every child deserves a good education. Every child is unique in talents and strengths. Every child is precious and gifted so every child must be matched with good quality instruction. When we begin to categorize children as early as elementary school, all we are doing is labeling them according to their parents' resources. That is not "gifted". That is "privilege". Limiting good education to children born with privilege will only exacerbate inequity in society, completely undermining our objective of providing education for all.  To order at Amazon,...

After more than ten years, the Department of Education in the Philippines has now taken steps to revised its ill-advised K plus 12 curriculum. The new curriculum, called MATATAG K to 10 curriculum addresses some of the issues I raised in the first post on this blog.  Above copied from ABS-CBN News As a summary, these are the changes according to    ABS-CBN News : In the present system, there are the seven identified foundational skills or learning areas for students: mother tongue Filipino English Mathematics  Araling Panlipunan MAPEH Edukasyon sa Pagpapakatao Under the adjusted K to 10 curriculum, learning areas are reduced to only five: Language Reading and Literacy Mathematics Makabansa GMRC (Good Manners and Right Conduct) There are likewise suggestions that the spiral approach in teaching math and sciences in grades 7 to 10 would be removed. The K plus 12 curriculum was clearly a wasteful experiment in the past ten years. It led to no improvement in basic educat...

I have not posted on this blog for some time. Of course, that does not mean a lack of interest or concern. Schools are still trying to recover from the pandemic and the problem of inequity in education remains pressing. There is something novel, however, that has caught the attention of educators: Artificial Intelligence. There is now ChatGPT, a program that can write a paragraph when provided a prompt, which is quite alarming for classes that require students to write essays. So, I tried it this morning and this is what I got: It is reasonable. In fact, ChatGPT is more reasonable than some parents in Fairfax county. Recently, some high schools in Fairfax county failed to notify their students of reaching a commended status in the PSAT. Just to be clear (from nationalmerit.org):  What does it mean to be National Merit Commended? Commended Students are named based on a nationally applied Selection Index score that may vary from year to year and is typically below the level required ...

Mike Mattos, a leader in professional learning communities, reminds educators that they must work to eliminate the "expectation that student achievement should plot across a bell-shaped curve". Of course, with the primary objective of "learning for all", a bell curve definitely points out that we are unsuccessful. The problem, however, is more serious than a bell curve. As Professor Massimo Boninsegni of Alberta pointed out years ago , a bimodal distribution is much more insidious. A bimodal distribution The above distribution can be seen in introductory science courses in college. A class with such a distribution can be divided into two groups. Oftentimes, the class is composed of two types of students: students who have taken advanced science courses in high school and students who have not. When such a distribution appears, it is apparent that some students are not seeing new material, while others are seeing topics for the first time. As someone who teaches an i...

With another mass shooting in an elementary school, again and again, thoughts and prayers are sent. Again and again, however, we hear the same excuses that only obfuscate our discussions. Mental health is a favorite red herring although studies are clear on this issue: Mental health does not correlate with the number of mass shootings. Every country in the world has its share of problems with mental health but only the United States is exceptional when it comes to the killing of children in their schools with assault rifles. Some argue that more guns in the hands of good people make a society safer. With 400 million guns and a population of about 330 million, there is more than enough firepower for everyone. And it is utterly wishful thinking to suggest that everyone in the United States is good. These tragic incidents require not just our thoughts and prayers, but more importantly, well-informed changes in our policies. Research shows that there is one factor that correlates well with...

Rene Luis Tadle Repost from Facebook This came out of my memory feed today. I remember how the Aquino government together with the so-called education experts and well-experienced education managers cajoled, rammed, and made false promises to convince students, teachers, and parents to accept the wisdom of additional two years of basic education despite the objections from various sectors. Thus, in 2015, together with other groups and individuals, CoTeSCUP questioned the constitutionality of the K-12 Law in the Supreme Court. SC declared that the law was constitutional and thus dismissed our petition, noting that it is within the police power of the state to enact educational laws including the K-12 Law. However, it noted as well that “It is not for the Court to look into the wisdom or propriety of legislative determination.” (CoTeSCUP et. al, vs. DOLE et al. G.R. No. 216930). Since then, studies have shown that K-12 Law failed to live up to its promise (Orbeta et al., 2019 Manansan, 2...