PRODDED by an email from a friend on the continuing fallout of the latest PISA ( Programme for International Student Assessment ) results, a no holds bared article in the Philippine Star by columnist Tony Lopez, titled “Mass Stupidity,” again highlighted the terrible state of education in the Philippines.
The latest literacy test ( reading, math and Science) of our 15-year-olds consistently put us at the bottom or near the bottom of some 80-country participants in the OECD-sponsored PISA.
For 72 years, the Philippines had a K-10 education system. We were one of only three countries in the world with ten years of mandatory schooling and the only one in Asia without a K-12. In 2012, we finally added grades 11 and 12, two years of senior high school.
We have only begun to reap what we have sown. For a long time, we sat in a simpler world, unable to see beyond the tip of our noses, content with a populace with innate talent and diligence to put us as one of the leading powerhouses in Asia. But the same dynamism and energy of our people began the country’s decline.
Rampant corruption and cronyism created a cynical and disaffected middle class. The pent-up energy of these great, talented masses saw no outlet to create wealth and better themselves. What started as a trickle became an exodus of the best and the brightest.
Instead of creating opportunities for the masses, the government encouraged the people to earn a living elsewhere and provide remittances at home. Now it’s too late. A critical mass of teenagers who can’t read, are mired in their smartphones all day and are victims of poverty and unsupervised parenting are making their presence known. The youth population of the Philippines is the largest in its history, comprising some 28%, estimated at 30 M.
People wonder why we don’t attract the manufacturing behemoths of the world as well as Vietnam and Singapore do. Why would we? How, for example, can Honda or Volkswagen start an E.V. plant in any part of the Philippines? ( both of these recently announced E.V. plants in Ontario ) We don’t have enough workers with STEM ( Science, Technology, Engineering and Math ) training to run high-tech manufacturing in the Philippines.
Our working class is a product of a K-10 education; the few engineers we have trained and graduated have not met the requisite qualifications and those who have migrated to where they can earn more. South Korea and Taiwan, not to mention Japan, have a highly technically trained population poised to enter the new AI industrial revolution.
Here we are; 31% of our youth can’t read! It does not take rocket science to know where we are going. Our contribution to the manufacturing world will continue to be in the apparel and trinket industry, of which we are not even the leading players.
Our economy will continue to chug along the service sectors, and masses of our educated will continue to leave for greener pastures.
THE REAL DRAG TO THE COUNTRY’S FUTURE
While the world is preoccupied with Artificial Intelligence (AI), 6G (the sixth generation of cellular networks ), and Quantum Computing, we are still mired in the same ongoing crisis of bad governance, corruption, poverty, educational woes and bureaucratic infighting dominated by political dynasties.
With intractable problems casting a long shadow over our future, you would think the great mass of our disheartened people would be out on the streets calling for a revolution. But 20%poverty and rising illiteracy are not conducive to any meaningful call for reforms from the masses.
Those who can bring change are part of the ruling class and have a self-serving agenda that preserves the status quo. Still, others are too busy preparing to exit the country.
The most disappointing assemblage of eldership in this country is stuck in an outdated bias of a Christian worldview that, to put it mildly, has immobilized the masses into subservient sheep encapsulated in an archaic, absolutist box.
Reading Jose Ma Montelibano’s article ( Can a Filipino be Reborn, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Mar. 29, 2024 ) is an exercise in a hopeless regurgitation of 500 years of liturgical delusion. His words: “Our faith includes a God that is free to intervene at His time” is nothing short of a moronic fantasy that prolongs the agony of the long-suffering Filipino.
The Inquirer is full of these creeds, like the weekly medieval hokum from Fr. Jerry Orbos’ “Moments” or Artemio Panganiban’s “J.C., The Reason for the Season.” Many PDI columnists sing the same bunk in support of an entrenched religious culture passed on for generations.
The longer these essays fester, the more the masses will continue to lapse into a never-ending fantasy that has not been delivered since Magellan erected a cross on the shores of Cebu. The energy that had gone into this futile fool’s paradise could have translated into a productive path.
Our powerbrokers ignore a more diverse population. Despite homogeneity, we have a new generation of people who are products of the computer age and social media, educated with a more “left of centre” outlook and an information technology wind on their backs.
As I have written before, our very own mentors, Spain and Belgium, have already left us ideologically. They have embraced what I call the three pillars of secularism: Divorce, Abortion and MAID ( Medical Assistance in Dying ).
Our pseudo padres and influence peddlers, which abound in the Philippines, cannot understand and assimilate a progressive mindset. As if that’s not enough, we even have a self-declared “appointed son of god” in our midst. I say, WTF!
Two thousand years of killing and mayhem on behalf of a mythological deity have continued unabated. The latest between Israel and Palestinians has 32,262 dead, 22 583 of whom are women and children.
There are an estimated 10,000 bodies under the rubble in Gaza that are yet to be removed. It is not something that started on Oct. 7; it’s a continuation of the never-ending intolerance between religious factions; if a truce is declared, it’s a pause to be continued later, the same as history has already revealed to us many times over.
The religions of the world have been praying for this mayhem to stop, just as they have since the Crusades and Inquisition that overwhelmed humanity before, and so with the Black Death of the 1300s that killed nearly half of Europe’s population. But it was the “Age of Enlightenment “( aka Science) that finally saved us.
When Novena tried to stop the 1918 Flu Pandemic, it went unabated and killed 50 M. Despite COVID-19s ferocity, vaccines kept the death rate to 7 M. The Vatican no longer calls for a “World’s Day of Prayer” for all the ills that beset humanity because they know it doesn’t work and it further ruins their credibility. Why? The Vatican runs on myth and superstition.
Why do our ecclesiastic elders never learn from the successes of others who “took the bull by horns” and said “enough”? Northern Europe is too remote and different, so how about Vietnam?
Coming out of the war and the Christian French influence, Vietnam declared sectarianism passe’ —it has the highest rate of Atheism in the world today, now at 81%. From one of the world’s poorest to the fastest economic growth in SE Asia achieved in a single generation.
They never looked back. They are prosecuting corrupt politicians and fraudulent billionaires with death sentences, attracting the highest direct foreign investment, have twice our growth rate and have homegrown E.V. manufacturing, to name some recent successes.
And here we are, a third of our population can’t read, our inbred politicians are pointing fingers at each other, and archaic religious ideology weighing us down like a grounded child. Folks, the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train! If you haven’t noticed, you’ve already been run over! *****
