ISSUES AND CONCERNS OF PHILIPPINE EDUCATION THROUGH THE YEARS

Quality education is the utmost goal of an educational system and its entire
stakeholders. Through years of improving the system, change in education has been
observed. Philippine education was challenged for multiple decades under different
governments. Each government has achieved different changes with different
motives. But, do Philippines achieved the quality education over decades? How did
past governments changed the system?

After I read the whole article, I am very amazed on how the writer simply
discussed the Philippine educational system from its origin until the present times in
a very understandable way. I used to read other articles related to the topic, but this
one is something great. To add, the writer used wise words and easy to apprehend.
His article is clear in thoughts and readers can easily visualize what happened
during the era of changes on Philippine education. What I like the most is the
arrangement of ideas and plots as well and it is truly informative.

On the other hand, I agree with the writer’s statement “Spaniards were
successful in making the natives illiterate and uneducated.” During this period,
Spaniards were only focused on helping wealthy Filipinos. They underestimated the
natives and failed to expand education to the natives. But, as for me, it was a
blessing in disguise. Native Filipinos were ones of the Filipinos who fought their
freedom and won that led to better chance. After Spaniards were defeated,
Americans governed the Philippines and improved the system.

I agree how writer elaborated the success of the system during American era.
Filipinos, the illustrados and the natives, were given free education and thousands of
graduates were tallied. Filipinos during this time, learnt some vocational and health
education, which I think the writer forgot to include. Filipinos were smoothly earning
the democratic life from chaotic experience under Spanish colonization. I like as well
the negative impact stated by the writer during this time. Americans were
brainwashing the Filipinos and imposed American cultures instead of nurturing
theirs. The writer had mentioned that Japanese destroyed the classroom and other
school materials which I somehow disagree after watching a related videos. The said
statement is not given specifically. I think classroom buildings and other educational
materials used were destroyed by Japanese- American war but were massively
rehabilitated.

We observed another change in education from Basic Curriculum Education

to K-12 education on this present times. Most of the adult now were graduated under
Basic Curriculum yet, still most of them were not landed a good job based on my
observation. This indicates that there is still problem on the educational system in the
Philippines. I agree on the writer’s points “Education has been looked into as the
means of alleviating poverty, decreasing criminals, increasing economic benefits,
and etc.” These may be the expectations yet are far from the reality because it was
not achieved by the most of the graduates. The K-12 education graduates are seen
ineffective otherwise.

The writer may pointed good and terrible things about the system. I believe,
the Philippine education at the present times is still in progress. It may sound
disconsolate, teachers and stakeholders should accept it.