“Adding years to the basic education program is not the solution to the crisis in Philippine education,” said ACT secretary general France Castro.
He said “the 12-year education cycle will definitely and heavily add to the burden of Filipino family which majority belongs to the poor and further exploit our teachers to more work loads and lesser pay in real value.”
“The 12- year basic education program will further deepen the chronic crisis of Philippine education which is caused and reflection of the chronic crisis of poverty and corrupt politics in the Philippines,” he said.
Castro pointed out that “all education program of the government implemented from Marcos dictatorship up to the Arroyo regime, like voc-tech, bridge program, etc., do not serve as a solution to the crisis and to the so called lack of quality of our education.”
“Instead, they resulted in more intense crisis and problem like decrease in education budget, growing shortages of schools basic needs, higher rate of school drop-outs, and increase of tuition and other miscellaneous fees.”
The militant teacher organization said that the problems in the country’s education “is not in the number of years, but inherent to its content and character as colonial, feudal, repressive and commercialized that cares and serve the colonial subservient character and backward economic system of the Philippines.”
“The content of Philippine education only means to produce graduates that will merely fill the needs of big multi-national companies for skilled but subservient workers,” Castro lamented.
“We see that the youth who will graduate from this 12- year basic education program will not necessarily lead to more employment, as we all know that the our backward economy cannot provide local employment and the world economic crisis gives no assurance to provide global employment to our Filipino youth,” Castro said.
“Unless the government will decisively push for a self reliant economy based on national industrialization and genuine agrarian reform, any move to reform our education will only worsen the education crisis,” Castro also said.
