Now what makes your education different from your sibling's?

Picture this - In your elementary days, you were made to carry all your eight or nine textbooks with all their corresponding notebooks to school. Your sibling will only have to carry five.

Starting this school year, DepEd is implementing the BEC, also known as the Millennium Curriculum in all public elementary and high schools in the Philippines. For this school year, private schools are given the option whether to implement the new curriculum or not, but they are obliged to eventually adapt the system in the succeeding years. The main feature of this new structure is the reduction of the usual eight or nine subjects into five learning areas - Filipino, English, Science and Mathematics and Makabayan. The Makabayan, which literally means patriotic, is a new subject presented as the combination of all the other learning areas - Social Studies, Technology, Home Economics, Music, Arts, Physical Education and Values Education.

Since this is a major change in a highly sensitive system in the country, it is expected that many people will voice out their antagonism over the BEC. Your sibling's teachers themselves could be some of them.

"The BEC will sacrifice the education of the youth, who will become cheap skilled laborers in the world market instead of productive Filipinos with a strong sense of history, culture arts and all-around skills," said Dr. Carol Almeda of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT.)

Why a new curriculum?
The BEC restructured the elementary and secondary curricula with aims at "rising the quality of our Filipino learners and graduates and empowering them for learning how to learn anywhere even when they are left to themselves." (DepEd website's Q&A on the BEC). According to DepEd secretary Raul Roco, the implementation of the BEC can't be put off anymore since the Philippines' education has already been lagging behind. The primer issued by the Education Department also states that the rationale for the curriculum reform is the need to come up with a relevant educational system that can meet the demands of a rapidly changing world. Aside from the consideration on having an education that is at par with global standards, the new curriculum also aims to mold Filipinos who can efficiently learn given the rapid changes and developments in knowledge.

Studies also show that the curriculum replaced by the BEC is overcrowded. Reports from the Committee on Information Technology, Science, Mathematics Education and Other Technologies (ITSMEOT) and the Presidential Commission on Educational Reform (PCER) show that this congestion in the curriculum is one of the primary roots of the unsatisfactory and unsteady achievements of Filipino students.

The overcrowded curriculum causes the loss of mastery on the basic skills.

So one of the major concerns of the restructured curriculum now is the improvement on the Filipino learners' curricular performance, thus the emphasis on linguistic fluency and scientific-numerical competence.Assessment tests and even regional studies have time and time proved that the quality of Philippine education is deteriorating, particularly in the fields of Communication Skills, Mathematics and Science. As a matter of fact, the NEAT and NSAT results of the last four years show that students correctly answer only less than 50% of the questions in the said learning areas.

What's new with the curriculum?
One of the noticeable changes in the curriculum is the difference in the time allocations of the different learning areas.

One hour each will be allotted everyday to Filipino, English, Science and Mathematics. Makabayan, meanwhile, will be taking three class hours everyday.

Grades 1 and 2 will not be having a separate Science course, however, scientific concepts are to be integrated in the teaching of English and Makabayan. The five-subject approach will be used by students from Grade 3 to Fourth year high school. Fourth year students also have an additional option with their Mathematics and Science Courses. In math, they can either take Business Mathematics and Statistics or Trigonometry and Advanced Algebra. In Science meanwhile, they can either take Advanced Chemistry or Physics.

DepEd instructed the educators to incorporate Values Education in all the five learning areas. Secretary Roco's examples are reading Sermon on the Mount for reading proficiency and grammar in an English class or the teaching of being accurate and honest in Math.

Another effort being done by DepEd through the new curriculum is the transformation of the classrooms into a two-way or interactive learning arena. Still written on the BEC primer, "Education can no longer be a one-way, top-to-bottom process, as the contemporary explosion of knowledge promotes distaste for any apparent form of elitism or authoritarianism. An interactive curriculum will be more effective for contemporary learners, who want to participate more actively in their learning experiences."

The new curriculum encourages a freer learning environment in the classrooms. It promotes more mutual interaction in class, more than just the teacher spoon-feeding and the students sitting and listening all day. Aside from the interaction of students and teachers, the new curriculum also fosters an atmosphere of informed interaction between students themselves, between students and instructional materials and multi-media sources and between teachers of different disciplines. It is therefore noteworthy that the teacher is no longer the authoritarian instructor but the learning facilitator.

"The new curriculum is designed to become more flexible and less prescriptive," says an online feature article saying that the BEC is good news for (parents). "It would enable teachers to be innovative and interdisciplinary in their instructional strategies, encourage the learners to think critically and creatively, allowing students to pursue their meaningful interest..."

Despite the extended time periods, DepEd assures that it would not be boring since the method of instruction would be more interactive. In fact, the extended periods would even give the students and the teachers more time for reflection, exploration and asking probing questions.

What is Makabayan?
"Love of country serves as the unifying principle for the diverse values in the fifth learning area, which is thus called Makabayan." And so DepEd is expecting this subject to live up to its name.

Makabayan, as mentioned earlier, is the combination of varied disciplines, and will be developed through integrated units of learning tasks in the said disciplines involved.

This subject can be taught by the teachers using the team teach approach. Under this system, teachers plan together and can also teach together. The schools meanwhile are given the authority on how they want the system of teaching Makabayan is going to be. This authority also gives them the freedom to contextualize the different Makabayan learning areas basing on the environment or society the students are living in.

The components of the Makabayan are basically the same subjects in the old curriculum and it is distributed as follows:

For elementary:
1. Sibika at Kultura (Grades 1, 2 and 3) and Heograpiya Kasaysayan at Sibika (Grades 4 to 6)
2. Musika, Sining at Edukasyong Pangkatawan at Pangkalusugan (MSEPP) for Grades 4 to 6. (For Grades 1 to 3, MSEPP is integrated in Sibika at Kultura)
3. Good Manners and Right Conduct (GMRC)

For High School
1. Araling Panlipunan
2. Technology and Home Economics 3. PE, Health and Music
4. Values Education.

Aside from Values Education being integrated in the four basic subjects, it is obvious that it will also have a unit credit in the Makabayan course. In High School for example, it will have a unit of 0.4. The remaining three area have 1.2 units each making the total units of the Makabayan 4.

The course on Information and Communication Technology meanwhile will be integrated in all subjects whenever or wherever it is available. The instructions can be in the form of Computer Aided Learning or the use of multimedia instructional materials.

DepEd also promises that Makabayan shall stress on development on social awareness, empathy, and a firm commitment to the common good.

And where are the teachers?
With all the features of the new curriculum such as its being interactive, collaborative and integrated, it is clear that much of the success of this program relies on the teachers, or now better called the facilitators.

Some of the teachers fear that this system is like shaping the minds of the students and molding them to be workers for a global industry.

Many others perceive the implementation of the BEC as a mere cost-cutting measure justifying the lesser subsidy given to the education sector every year.

Still many other teachers fear them might lose their job because of the BEC despite the almost common knowledge that there is a "shortage" of teachers in this country.

But one of the big issues on this case is the accusation that the DepEd did not get the teachers prepared for the change in curriculum. It should be considered however, that the learning areas in the new curriculum are basically just the same subjects, and only the time allotment for each subject is changed.

If BEC fails to deliver its promised improvement on the Philippine educational system, what the DepEd must do next is to train the teachers for hope of transforming them into flexible and competent teachers who, when the cheese is moved, do not get lost.

Now that the BEC has been partially implemented, the least the teachers could do is just cooperate and do their part of teaching the kids and if necessary, perhaps improving themselves.

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