A Shallow Generation

I think I would never see, students working as hard as a bee, not in in this lifetime that many children are confused in society torn with corruption and greed. It was a pain in the ass being a teacher in a third world country, being underpaid and working more than your capacity, I couldn't even touch my keyboard and start writing on this blog on a regular time interval! It was a sad tale yet I have to live with it, not for the rest of my life, but as long as I haven't got another job!

What bothers me is not about me or my family's future, it is the children who I am responsible to teach. I couldn't get into their minds what is supposed to be fed in them. I hate to admit it, but the quality of education in the Philippine setting has long been corrupted by those administrators and managers on the higher offices, jumping one curriculum to another without even taking note of the consequences it has on the students. There are no studies done to show how wrong an implementation is or no evaluation of the previous curricula before going to another. It was just like changing shirts! They were not bothered by the preparations and additional burden on the shoulders of the ranks like us. They never even thought of the impact of these changes on students! Imagine, every time the department secretary changes, so was the curriculum! Our graduating student today have undergone almost 3 curriculum changes while studying a 4 year secondary course. What could be the effect on them???

A SHALLOW GENERATION! That is. you could hardly find an ordinary high-school student who really do understand the word OBLIVIOUS. And it is very obvious that these students could not very well express their thoughts. We can find students doing a lot of things in their body out of curiosity. There are body piercing, abuse and dependence on drugs, grass, sex, violence. They tend to associate with people whom they hardly knew. They even organized themselves and try to build a name, of being notorious in the campus. You can only see through them, but you won't hear from them. Even their names are sometimes miss-spelled! What would you expect from them? I have been teaching 10 years now and have seen both the best and the worst students. In today's setting, you will meet them both in one single class, both sides of the extreme qualities of the students. Those on the better side, performs to their best, but only a handful, sometimes, not even three in a class. Worst sides are booming, numbers are far more exceeding than a handful. Bridging the gap between them are below average ones who could hardly be felt. What happened? It is easy to pass a name than to fail his mother or father begging for mercy. This was the real scenario. At the end of every grading period, it is a familiar scene that could be observed. Many parents roam around, begging teachers to let their children stay on the class and pass! Head teachers are also problems. You could hardly find one who will stand by you on the case against students failure. Most of them see student's failure as teacher's failure! What a disgrace! Teachers burdened with full time loads and a ton of paper works, would still find time to visit the students and asked them to come on school and study?

I don't really know where the root of the problem really is. Should some other government agencies be more vigilant and start to do some actions on this matter? But what agency could help when in their own agencies, they have a much worse problem? Should the senate and congress enact a law that will force the students to study and parents to be responsible for their children's attention on studying? After all, the government is paying the tuition fees of these irresponsible students! Should we change the whole system? I don't know. I could not even think about it. It was too complicated that almost everyone is connected to the crime of not giving or not taking the right to a good education and be educated. What will the future of the Philippines be if the citizen's are not well educated at all?