84 surgeries performed

If little learning is a dangerous thing, as a bard once said, then there is certainly no bliss in ignorance.

Something dangerous is taking place in our nation today. Instead of teaching their craft here, we have lost our best lawyers, accountants, scientists, craftsmen, writers, artists and medics to better paying chores abroad. The "knowledge" diaspora, woefully, includes teachers who would rather be nannies abroad to teach English and grammar to the children of the rich and the aristocracy.

That is part of the reason why our education system no longer empowers Filipinos to be competitive. In the development of human capital, "lack of resources" really means lack of quality of the graduates of our schools. Even the international ratings of our better schools no longer flatter. What more of the rest of the inferior schools?

This is astonishing since the Constitution supposedly mandates that the highest budget allocation should go to Education. Yet the Education budget in the past had risen only by an average of 2%. Population and inflation growth rates of 2.3% and 6% (respectively) completely erode that increase.

Only three of 100 students who enter the First Grade actually finishes college; 25 of that 100 quit after Grade Three while only 45 will eventually finish high school. Kids in the public schools (9 out of 10 high schools are public) have been found to be 30% (malnourished), 30%(stunted growth) and 30% (with terrible eyesight). See how poverty has also complicated the issue of quality education?

On the other hand, how can we produce good students when 70% of the physics, math and science teachers (as a result of the brain drain) are not even majors in those subjects? 80% of public school teachers admit deficiency in English? So how in Shakespeare's name can one teach effectively when one is weak in the medium of instruction (English) in the first place? Physician, heal thyself - they would say.

The late fiery Education secretary Raul Roco discovered a barrel (not a can) of worms at the Department of Education with overpriced and inferior books, desks, schools and supplies with teachers sadistically paid low salaries and therefore easy prey to greedy loan sharks lurking behind their shadows.

Roco's E-Purchase campaign may have erased some of the chicanery in the education department but Panfilo Lacson is set to investigate why three-fourths of the published materials and books by government is cornered by one Group identified with Vidal Publishing. According to the senator, not only is the government being defrauded of billions every year but the syndicate's production of "erroneous and shabbily made" books exacerbates the dismal condition of Philippine education today. These people deserve to be hanged like Saddam Hussein.

The nature of our fiscal situation also abets the condition. While 40% of total budget is automatically appropriated to debt payment, Education has not taken the prime attention in budgetary allocation. Consider that in the remarkably small country like Turkey, they allocate US$15 million to primary education while the Philippines has only US$2.4 million to show. One, therefore, must not wonder why Turkey has one classroom for every 35 students while we have one for every 80 students when the universal ideal ratio is 1 room : 25 students.

This educational system that breeds half-baked graduates if not widespread ignorance could take the full measure of the skills and intelligence of new education secretary Tarlac Congressman (ex) Jesli Lapuz. He will have to outdo his sterling history in the private sector and his consummate tenacity as was and means chair in Congress in order to take this problem by the horns.

Pending the COLA decision of the Supreme Court, Lapuz assures he will increase the salaries of public school teachers from 50 to 100% to address one side of the problem.

Recently GMA had ordered the budget department to allocate majority of the P22-billion savings due to the strengthening of the peso to go to Education. Let's see what happens especially since 2007 can be an election year.

One of the government's right moves is to reinstate a different kind of NCEE to get rid of inferior fly-by-night schools (diploma mills) who graduate kids in abandon since there is no qualifying exam to enter college anyhow. But this is a better NCEE (called NCAE) as this will cover not just scholastic ability (like the old NCEE) but includes technical/vocational aptitude and entrepreneurial skills tests.

The DepEd will likewise engineer a crash course for all principals in the 42,000 public schools in the country for management skills to make them run their schools professionally. That is certainly necessary since schools as an institution deal with personnel, administration, budgets and public relations as well. Also 600 mobile teachers will soon be deployed in far-flung areas to teach (barangay level) out of school youth and adults as part of the "alternative learning course."

The Government has also enticed the private sector to help free the country from the bondage of ignorance by giving 150% tax break on any contribution of the private sector to uplift public education in the country.

One of the most interesting private sector initiatives in this regard is the GILAS program or the Gearing Up Internet Literacy Access for Students in order to build capabilities of our youth for ICT kind of jobs. The ambitious project costing P1.7 billion will connect all the public high schools to the Internet in order to democratize access to information in that they can now all access electronic encyclopedia without buying them through the computers.

Don't look now but the private sector led by private groups like the Ayala Group, the PBSP, the Makati Business Club and other telecommunication companies has made a dent in that 1,000 of the 5,800 public high schools in the country today is now wired to the Internet. We must understand that it costs P100,000 to get connected to the Internet per school without computer laboratories and P200,000 to set up 10 computers per school.

It is not incredibly funny that it will take the private sector to understand that the wave of the future includes computer-literate students who can be the outsourcing beneficiaries of many multi-nationals in this prevent age. Even ABS CBN has packaged an educational program that is aired in that channel for teachers and students to learn from on a daily basis.

All that took was imagination, political will, desire to help and a few computers with Internet access to shorten this stiff fight against ignorance and mis-education in this country. Of course, it had to take the private sector to see that.

For Government and the scoundrels surrounding the educational system, there are a billion reasons why they prefer the old method of teaching via textbooks and other supplies - no matter how Jurrasic a method is being pushed.

Now, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know those billion reasons.