What’s deeply unnatural
These days, the political babel shatters illusions that enough is being done for the people by those they elected to lead them toward progress.
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These days, the political babel shatters illusions that enough is being done for the people by those they elected to lead them toward progress.
“Unusual” but not “illegal.” “Irregular” but, again, not illegal.
Words flow in the ongoing impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte. Lawyers from either prosecution or defense use legalese to best advantage, and senator-judges weigh in with their own verbal skills, whether or not these are relevant to the bigger cause or are designed to lead thoughts elsewhere.
If you look at the sentences from where the words above came, you might be troubled by the fact that the Office of the Vice President had withdrawn P125 million and used it all in 11 days.
Investigation into the confidential funds have yielded even more “unusual” names of people — and just the idea of these lists as fake or faked in such a brazen manner gives rise to even more dire conclusions.
An elected official such as the VP, who was appointed to head the Department of Education for a time until all hell broke loose on the question of her office’s budget allocation, has spent most of her time attending to her personal concerns.
There is the case of her father, former President Rodrigo Duterte, now at The Hague to stand trial, and there is the impeachment case hanging over her own head at the moment.
One can hardly recall any accomplishments during her short stint at DepEd, much less any duties she has performed as VP, if any. Engulfed as she is in a political storm that continues to rage, especially one that is centered around the questionable use of public funds, it is hard to even recall her days as a champion of the oppressed in her hometown, Davao City.
These days, the political babel shatters illusions that enough is being done for the people by those they elected to lead them toward progress.
VP Sara, as former DepEd chief, had actually done something significant. She launched the Matatag Curriculum, a major overhaul of the K-12 system that reduced learning competencies to focus on foundational skills like basic literacy and numeracy, as well as values education.
The latter should be interesting to look into as, judging from the proliferation of corruption issues in the country, subjects that focus on character development and civic responsibility are needed more than ever.
So here’s the rub: while DepEd was rolling out curriculum changes, the public was watching VP Sara vigorously defend requests for hundreds of millions in confidential and intelligence funds, including P150 million specifically for the education department.
For many Filipinos, there was a massive, frustrating disconnect. It is hard to feel the impact of a revised curriculum when the sector is still suffering from a staggering shortage of over 165,000 classrooms, forcing many public schools to hold multiple shifts to accommodate the students.
Severe delays in textbook distribution also force many students to share basic learning materials. And the unavoidable truth: Filipino students consistently fail to meet minimum global proficiency standards.
According to the government’s education commission (EDCOM 2), only 30.52 percent of Grade 3 students actually grasp their basic lessons. Tragically, by the time students reach Grade 12, that proficiency rate crashes to nearly zero — just 0.47 percent.
To picture what that 0.47 percent looks like in real life: out of every 1,000 senior high school students, only four actually have the critical thinking and problem-solving skills expected for their age.
The crisis is even worse for students living in remote or poorer communities. In these far-flung schools, a mere 0.13 percent of Grade 12 students are considered proficient, and absolutely zero students were found to be “highly proficient.”
The Department of Education’s own National Achievement Tests prove the problem. In the 2023 NAT for Grade 12, the average scores across the country failed to even hit the minimum “Nearly Proficient” passing bracket of 50 to 74 percent.
Things didn’t get better the following year. In 2024, the Grade 12 national average score was a dismal 41.12. This means that across all regions and all school tracks, our graduating seniors are officially classified as having “Low Proficiency.”
While politicians fight over hundreds of millions in secret funds, the harsh reality is that 996 out of every 1,000 young Filipinos are graduating high school and stepping into college or the workforce without the basic skills they need to survive and succeed.
