Although the 1987 Constitution and various laws on education accentuate the vital responsibility of the public education system in the development of a republican nation of patriotic and responsible citizens, we have witnessed for the last ten years, a malfunctioning democracy caused by an inferior basic education system that is not inclusive, and provides no room for critical thinking in classrooms. It is a system that celebrates the remarkable progress of a few while disregarding the corrosion of the general proficiency of the vast majority of average students. As a result, we see the materialization of a society polluted with Orwellian smart shaming and anti-intellectualism, the stuff political despots and economic scammers thrive in.

The editorial of a leading broadsheet (Inquirer, May 21, 2023) stressed that the below-average IQ ranking of the Philippines in the World Population Review 2023 is no longer surprising considering the abysmal performance of high school students in PISA 2018, SEA-PLM, and TIMMS 2019. This is an indictment of the persistent poverty and learning crisis our country is afflicted with.

RA 10533 (the Kindergarten to Grade 12 law) describes what a Philippine public education school should be: learner-centered; inclusiveness amidst a diversity of learners; regarding the first language of the learner as a resource instead of a deficit; a curriculum that is culture-sensitive, constructivist, inquiry-based, reflective, collaborative, integrative and adheres to the principles and framework of Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE). The reality is far from ideal. Let me identify two aspects of these realities.

First, education officials act as if we are still a US territory and stubbornly hold on to an iniquitous mindset that using English as the medium of instruction is the best approach to teaching Filipinos who are non-native English speakers. Research indisputably shows that a child who receives instruction in a language unknown to him or her is excluded from any significant learning in the classroom. Math and Science are not learned less in other languages aside from English. Look at our neighbors in Asia like Communist China, South Korea, and Japan, and see how progressive they are in spite of their lack of proficiency in English. They have no poverty and learning crisis that approximates ours.

Second, the tendency to believe in misinformation and disinformation, and to contribute to its spread, shows that many Filipinos lack the ability to discern when one has too little information that calls for additional credible data to reach a rational conclusion to accept or reject a proposition. This acumen requires critical thinking skills that are expected to be learned in school if we followed the law (Ponce de Leon, May 24, 2023). Sadly, the country’s public education system, which we inherited from the Americans, continues to hold back most Filipinos with average abilities from achieving their full potential. The curriculum, which was supposed to be decongested by the addition of two years to the old 10-year basic education cycle, remains jam-packed making rote memorization a must to survive the semester. There is no time to conduct critical thinking activities in the classrooms.

Horace Mann (1796-1859), the father of American education, said that “a republican form of government, without intelligence in the people, must be, on a vast scale, what a mad-house, without superintendent or keepers, would be on a small one.”

The Philippines’ chronic malady of defective delivery of sound policies needs aggressive correction to narrow the gap between policy and practice. To make the grade, Dep Ed has a lot of catching up to do to wipe out the learning crisis of our nation at risk of being called a madhouse nation.