By: Juan Miguel Luz
Philippine Daily Inquirer
11:08 pm | Friday, May 4th, 2012
Structural reform is finally taking shape in Philippine education.
Formal education leaders have led this charge but there are two in
particular who, as philosophers, articulated the foundations for these
changes: Mario Taguiwalo and Victor Ordoñez, whose breadth and scope of
thought helped shape the reforms we see today.
On May 4, friends paid tribute to Mario in a program in Malacañang. May 4 also marked the third anniversary of Victor’s passing.
Both men were exceptional human beings with an ability to take
complex ideas and contentious discussions and summarize these into
simple but clear frameworks upon which new ideas could be built so that
even warring parties each felt they had “won over” the other.
They shared a passion for education and the social sectors. Both
served in government, their paths crossing in the administration of
President Cory Aquino when Mario was health undersecretary and Victor,
education undersecretary. And interestingly enough, they shared an
extracurricular career in film as “character actors” or “bit players,”
depending on your point of view.
Mario once wrote, “Victor and I were actually in one scene together
in a movie entitled ‘Kid, Huwag Kang Susuko,’ starring Richard Gomez.
At that time, Victor and I were already undersecretaries (in
government), and we had a scene together that Director Peque Gallaga
said could be used to promote the movie as endorsed by the Departments
of Education and Health. The problem was, the movie was about illegal
gambling in human blood sports. Victor played a shady Chinese
businessman with a weak chin; I was a corrupt small-time politician with
a pot belly.”
Both had a great sense of humor.
But it is in education reform where they made their greatest contribution, in my view.
In “Politics and Education Reform,” Mario wrote in 2009:
“The urgency of education reform is no longer debated. Only the sequence and dynamics of the process are in dispute.
“As for the basic directions of education reform, evidence and expert consensus point to certain agreed fundamentals.
“1. We need a much greater effort to get all children ready for
school by age 6 using a wide variety of early childhood care and
development interventions at homes, communities and institutions.
“2. We must establish a longer basic education cycle than the 10 years we have at present.
“3. We must have effective mother tongue language education to
achieve early mastery of literacy skills before children transition to
national and English language education.
“4. Our education delivery, administration, governance and
accountability have to be decentralized to school and community levels.
“5. Communities, in turn, must have institutionalized participation in education governance and accountability.
“6. The preparation, hiring and supervision of teachers must
emphasize teaching competencies associated with child learning rather
than the accumulation of credentials.
“7. Our education facilities and education administration must be modernized using cost-effective and appropriate technologies.
“8. We must attain consistent compliance with basic standards in our education provisions to all communities.
“9. A large, extensive and dynamic set of private education options
at all levels must be sustained as an essential complement to our public
education system.
“10. Higher education programs and institutions must be financed
based on proven performance on valued aspects of higher education
competencies.”
Mario stressed that these reforms were unlikely to succeed if pursued
solely by the education sector without broader multisectoral
participation. For the package to be possible, strong political backing
by the national leadership at the highest levels was “non-negotiable.”
In short, we needed an “education president.”
Victor’s reform view was similarly structural:
“Economics and technology have changed the way people live and work
in advanced communities throughout the world, while other communities
still live in cultural patterns unchanged over centuries, more deeply
isolated and quagmired in poverty than ever before. And yet, for both
the advantaged and the poor, the present structures for education, where
it is available, remain basically the same: prescribed primary
schooling of about six years, organized by age cohorts, and followed by
secondary education focused on largely rigid academic subject
classifications, with higher education available to a select minority.”
Here, systemic change in the approach to education was necessary:
“The search is not for a single new paradigm, but for as many new
paradigms as are demanded by the diverse learning needs of vastly
different communities and societies at different stages of development
in different sociocultural settings. The search for new paradigms does
not imply rejection of the basic ethos of learning and schooling… It
does recognize that much of the present structure of education and much
that now occupies the time of the learner must be rethought in light of
the demands of the 21st century.”
The work on education reform will not be finished in the
short-to-medium term. But strong philosophical underpinnings have been
laid and both Mario and Victor were instrumental in this regard.
Mario and Victor raised our hopes for a better Philippines. Our world is that much richer for having had them with us.
Juan Miguel Luz (juanmiguel.luz@gmail.com) is dean of the Center for
Development Management at the Asian Institute of Management.
Source: http://opinion.inquirer.net/28133/in-celebration-of-mario-taguiwalo-and-victor-ordonez
Posted by: Steven Egay, GCES batch 1983
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