AN ordinary day in a public elementary class in a Bicol city, Mrs. Cruz of Grade 4(Dakila) asked her pupil Juan why he was absent for three days straight. The nine-year old shyly answered, “Nagpurot po kami nin manga batbat para ipabakal tanganing itao ki Nanay saka magkaigwa kami nin balon. (We picked up scrap iron to sell to give the money to Mother so that we would also have allowance for coming to school.”

        This situation in our lowest level of education needs no further elaboration: it’s all over place writhing somehow in the school rice program and unfulfilled promise to folks by GMA splattering up to flop. Why rice for attendance? That’s the easiest way not to lose face in an instructional seemingly simple problem though at the bottom challenges expertise of educators whose hands are not tied of favor and malice.

        The chattering boast of the administration shows also in the DepEd’s one-book-per-child project among its arm-chair strategists only to find them, thousands and thousands of unused books, safely locked but rotting in stockrooms throughout its dominion. Unwary materials written by unceremonious monkey-brain nitwits. There, leaving schoolchildren with only a handful.

        A local principal I met and talked yesterday by chance on the matter said he’d think of himself first while in the service for the bigtime crooks are up there. Complementing his cohorts, the horrendous scenario is yet to come as we wade onto the labyrinth of education and no wondering further on the withdrawal of the electronics teaching to use satellites. Danger from ZTE, a high-salaried snitch for GMA should have advised.

        Well, the classroom-provision portfolio regional administrators had a tart-lashing from GMA when she came to Bicol lately. It revealed a deliberate effort by the DepEd to cover-up work progress at the loss of pupils’ placement in classrooms. They really have their heart in the wrong place. So, too, with the meager hiring of new teachers. Then the field has no recourse than to mass in 50 noisy kids in each room, very nature-like under a tree as well, against tutors’ hope of 25 to 30 to better individual learning in the guidance of J.J. Rousseau they got in the graduate school at most. No money? In payola, there is.

        With the teachers’ surrogacy (their sacred oath as substitute parent) stretching every other educational objective to its breaking point and their worsening working conditions by the day, the teaching outputs have no other way but down the drain. Generally.

        How GMAs educator-lieutenants misguide teachers is unparalleled in their milieu since the establishment of Public Instruction by the Americans. This is a shocker, a real blockbuster, you can say.

        Now, the proficiencies on basic subjects by elementary teachers have been credited to only 60 percent of them, in the secondary, 20 percent. Verbalization in English of advance students—that of Grade 2 or 3. Teachers’ eligibility while teaching in Mindanao is to a low 2 percent in comparison with that in Luzon 15.

        The disgustingly poor showing in English did move GMA to fund P500 million to retrain both teachers and students in response to the global occupation need of putting up the advantage of having OFWs with standard communication skills. The economist in her wanted the quick buck. It must spell the difference in bringing in the dollar to the country in complete disregard of the now-imbalanced health-sector service profile and others, particularly in the rural areas due to brain drain.

        Marcos initiated the brain drain. GMA instituted it. Amorality kicked Marcos and Estrada out of office; GMA entrenched inward, the masses double-crossed.

        That’s how uneasy the education imbroglio has set in nowadays, taking English as raison d’etre for its stupidity. Just imagine an infusion of investment in a devil-may-care attitude, no lasting philosophy, no execution framework that can rationalize the true alleviations of the poor.

        Middle managers in DepEd don’t care anyway. If there is one part of the decrepit system holding on to put sanity in the service, they are the classroom teachers. They appear untainted in their uniforms that change in fabric and color more often than the weather, even in hunger.

        You see, their supervisors are on their own, titillating teachers for a while, then confused. As there are these superiors, corresponding orientation bombardments explode in the classrooms like dead whistles. It does end, more on four or five gives. It was better in the old days when, on account of an executive academic supervisor in every division, subject supervisors were unified in steering strategy and content in schools to teachers. In the starting employment, it was the same, pitching in to get in.

        All along, classroom teachers have retained their bearing. It’s the mental antibodies they’ve instinctively nurtured through the years, I presume, in their passionate contact with children. And that’s what the higher-up missed.