Skip to main content

Down on Twos and Fours

INSPIRATIONAL SPEAKER John Maxwell was in full logic when he said in one of his public presentations when he came to the Philippines. He said that a leader who is a two in competency range of 1 to 10 will not be able to get or develop leaders who are nines. Nines attrack nines. And there is no cutting short that law of nature.

The dismal performance of public school principals in the recently results of the 2011 National Qualifying Examination for School Heads (NQESH) tells us in bleak terms a good part on the reason while public education in the country is a disgrace. If the third-richest person in the world Warren Buffett insisted that his children get their education from public schools, I wonder if he would change that policy had he been staying in the country.

Of the 11,778 head teachers around the country, only 1,024 passed? I used the question mark at the end of an obvious statement in order to emphasize that something must be wrong in the figure. If the testakers will insist the results are wrong, I could easily think that the testing system must be having an electronic glitz. But that is only conjecture. The fact is, around 92 percent of the head teachers who took the exam failed.

If we will go for the Maxwellian logic, a head teacher who failed in a qualifying exam can most unlikely produce children who can pass a qualifying exam at their level. If a few lucky pupils did pass under this principal, it must be because of the pupil's own natural, or technically hereditary, gifts, and not thanks to the teachers who taught them in school.

It is good that Republic Act 9155 (Governance of Basic Education Act of 2001) came off Congress ten years ago as provided a measure that identifies those who cannot be head teachers from those who will be competent at their job. But a lot of questions must be raised after the fact. After ten years, why is it that nothing effective had been done to ensure that head teachers who failed leave their job, or at least improve the rate of passing. An eight percent passing rate nationwide is disheartening.

Our educational systerm really needs a major overhaul to get our students out of the hole of bad education. Education when done badly does not obviously raise good students, and eventually workers later on. The present administration sees the problem, and is willing to act on it... seriously act on it. And that's the good news.

The K2+12 program can be a good start. But still with teachers in this dismal state of readiness to produce excellent students, even this program is bound to fail.

At the end of the day, the failing teachers, if not pulled out of circulation, will be the ones who will implement the new program. And who are crazy enough to expect better things when that state is beyond the teachers' reach, as far as the NQESH is concerned?
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Skirting the Issues of Bad Journalism

AMADO DORONILA of the Philippine Daily Inquirer writes today about the perceived coercion that President Benigno Aquino III made on the press in defense of his "passion for flashy cars," and for  his lifestyle as a "pampered son of a wealthy family living an unfrugal life." I encountered some confusion on how Mr. Doronila reasoned out his understanding on how frugal life is meant to be lived. Does he meant to keep the money on the vault unused simply for the sake of not spending them? That will be a suggestion for a miser's lifestyle. Aquino may have "bought," actually exchanged, a third-hand Porsche for his old BMW for approximately the same valuation of P4.5 million. In effect, there was no significant money spent for the acquisition, except perhaps a sales tax if that applied. And here Mr. Doronila concluded that the new President of the Republic is living an "unfrugal life" (did he expect Mr. Aquino to sell the luxury car he had befor...
Post a Comment
Read more

Substate-of-a-Gun

THE MORO ISLAMIC Liberation Front (MILF) boldly declared that Muslims be allowed to run their government even "if they go to hell by their own making, so be it." I go for a lasting peace in Muslim Mindanao; but I have serious doubts on real peace when these armed Muslim leaders cannot accept the fact of life that Mindanao is no longer a Muslim territory after Muslim settlers took the land from the Lumads in the prehistoric Philippines. I came from Zamboanga, and grew there. Despite MILF's claim of representing the dream of Muslims in Mindanao, I have serious doubts if the leaders are merely using this separatist slogan for their own aggrandizement. Look at ARMM under MNLF's Nur Misuari who had nothing to show for the tax shares it received from the government. And reports had it Misuari kept a huge sum from this money for his own accounts. So I have so much reservations on the lasting peace settlement with the MILF can bring. First, how much really of our Muslim si...
Post a Comment
Read more

Embarrassing Pull Out

THE THING WITH the latest pull out of the Philippine military vessels from the disputed Panatag Shoal gives me a feeling that we have embarassed ourselves for getting duped into withdrawing from standing put in defending that claim. The current statement from the Chinese foreign ministry seems to say that the Philippines has the only responsibility to keep the tension down in the area; not the overreaching China. Somehow China managed to stand pat on its stubbornness in "defending" what is "hers" from the Philippine claim. If the Philippine politicians fail to get the message, then we as well admit our claim as much weaker (of low resolve) compared to that of China. Imagine leaving the Panatag Shoal on the excuse of protecting the government military vessels from bad weather. That's hollow-sounding to me considering that Chinese policy considers such a move a non-issue on their part. So much for our resolve to claim wha...
Post a Comment
Read more