Would you mind sitting on the floor?
“Malicious and fabricated” was how the Department of Education labeled a reporter’s tweet on the first day of class opening. But the national daily said it is standing by its reporter’s tweet. DepEd retorted that the teacher deliberately rearranged the chairs for a group activity.
If given more time and attention, the verbal brawl can go all the way up to the courts. Like in all other petty cases, there are no winners, even if the court sides with one party. Debating the report’s accuracy and whatever innuendos it created in the readers’ minds will not eliminate the elephant in the room.
The World Bank estimates that 9 out of 10 Filipino 10-year-olds are not proficient in reading. Although other countries have experienced an increased learning poverty rate due to the pandemic, the case of the Philippines is higher by 56.4 percentage points.
The preceding situation may have motivated Vice President and DepEd Secretary Sara Duterte to issue DepEd Order 34, Series of 2022, which requires all public and private schools to hold face-to-face classes starting November 2, 2022.
As the country transitions from modular, remote, or online learning to in-person learning, the perennial problems that schools have been facing in the past are here again to challenge the country’s fight against learning poverty. Lack of classrooms, overcrowding, shortage of teachers, and many other problems muffled screams of excitement from teachers and learners on the first day of classes.
While the defensive stance of DepEd may be understood as a spur-of-the-moment remark and not an assertion of a perfect system, the reporter’s tweet may also be treated as the viewpoint of an observer whose insights may carry weight in improving the educational system.
Before this tussle could escalate into something else, would all stakeholders mind sitting on the floor? Let’s talk about the elephant in our living room that has been plaguing us for ages.