Epidemic of illiteracy? Think twice what it meant to be educated.
When Iligan launched its collaborative initiative in 2009 on Reverse 47-74+1, it was motivated by a national achievement test (NAT) result expressing that Iligan only achieved an unbelievable rate of 47% . This rate was next to Maguindanao and ARMM.
An assessment was immediately made in an education summit and program was developed for local action with DepEd-Iligan, mayor's office, congressman's office, MSU-IIT (Chancelor's Office), Reverse 57-75 (national campaign platform of stakeholders focused on improving education), Saint Michael's College, and with a local foundation.
The social welfare office, who cares for family in violent and fragile circumstances, wasn't part of the collaboration then.
Trainings for elementary teachers were conducted, some structural reform also happened within DepEd-Iligan, modules were developed, nutrition plan was introduced, and many meetings had to be undertaken involving educators from schools in 44 barangays.
The trainings intended to review and upscale teachers competency on reading, comprehension, and retention. The purpose here was focused on arriving at an outcome where learners' ability to read increase too the child's comprehension and knowledge retention. Its always possible that one can read but lacks the ability to comprehend and to retain these knowledge. These are significant aspects of education because examinations intend to assess the child's comprehension and retention abilities; not just its ability to read.
But comprehension and retention are also matters that require our re-investigation on what are our perceptions of a child from the lens of philosophy of education; what are the additional roles and needs of teachers who have slow learners; what nutrition is required to improve children's capacity to retain knowledge; and what interventions are needed to address issues of families who can't send their children to school to comply 100% of the required school days. We found out that most of the drop outs were caused by poverty and lack of food. This is structural violence.
There were many things that went beyond teachers training. Books were reviewed, remedial reading were all the more required, science instrumentation were undertaken, and the roles of supervisors to monitor developments were underscored. (Read some of the details in local education reform in http://taskforce47-74plus1.blogspot.com/)
The program had to work through resource management too. DepEd had to contribute, the city government had to release budget to fund the feeding of malnourished children and encouraged to evaluate purchased books, congressman's office had to find resources too to technically support the program, access to corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs were tapped, etc etc etc. Here, I came to understand the difficulty in budget lobbying at the council and the need to find champions of education among local legislators.
I didn't had an illusion we can do it overnight.
Dialogues were necessary measures that had to transpire beyond closed doors to persuade partners to support necessary actions.
See? The problem of education requires systemic response and mobilization of resource, scarce maybe in this time when wars and calamities are at our attention's peak, and when schools are utilized as evacuation centers in times of calamity and violence.
Now don't challenge me to speak of drugs, wars, and crimes' correlation to education needs.
