Dismal learners’ performance; the roles of the family, community, and school

There’s this newspaper column by Boo Chanco about young Filipino learners being among the dumbest students in the world. He cited international studies indicating that out of 58 countries, the Philippines was last in Grade 4 math and science. Learning outcomes of Grade 5 students indicated that a large number of Filipino learners are not proficient enough in reading, writing, and math to advance to secondary school. Only 10 percent of Filipino learners had developed proficiency in reading, 17 percent in mathematics, and only one percent in writing. Out of 79 countries, the Philippines ranked lowest in reading comprehension and second-lowest in science and mathematics.


That depresses me no end because that is not how I remember the state of education in my homeland. Granting that I have since resettled in the U.S. for decades now and that many things could have happened in the interim, still, the transformation as reported is quite drastic, even unbelievable. I had also taught to a mixed class of foreign students for six years in Japan but always held up my experience in the Philippine setting as a model to emulate for the mostly insubordinate, disorderly, and irresponsible low-performing students in U.S. public schools. Anong nangyari?


In the Philippine educational system there is a program called TESDA intended to promote employment through entrepreneurial, self-employment, and service-oriented activities. However, according to the latest COA annual audit report cited in the article, of the 75,004 graduates of TESDA’s Special Training for Employment Program in 2019, only 5.64 percent landed jobs – way below the agency’s target of 65 percent employment rate. Rep. Joey Salceda said that there’s hesitation among local companies to hire K-12 graduates and subsequently proposed a re-calibration of the K-12 program. Obviously, spending more money will not solve the problem because the Department of Education has the biggest budget (last year STEP alone had a P2.1 budget). DepEd procured that year over P254 million worth of learning materials that contained significant errors and deficiencies, said Salceda. Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian also called for reforms in the education system – from teacher training to the curriculum – to ensure that our students learn. We need better educators, Chanco said.


Yours truly had advanced the educational concept of Dr. Isidro Ordona, dean of education in the school I first taught after graduation, the University of San Carlos in Cebu City, about education being a “tripod of pedagogy, namely, the family, the school and the community”. The family is and must be at the forefront of all educational endeavors, Ordona said. It provides the basic attitudes and values for the children to be educable in any formal or informal learning setting. The community provides the arena for the students to interact with and extends the necessary support for the students to be able to apply knowledge and skills learned in schools.


The school, through the teacher, provides the contents of various disciplines needed for developing each child’s specific needs and skills and the structure, order, and educational legitimacy. As noted, the teacher is only one of the legs of that tripod. No one succeeds without the other two sharing in the task.