In the Name of Standardization

A young Ata girl approaches me and says, "Ate, wala ko kahibalo sa answer ani." (Older Sister, I don't know the answer to this question) She then proceeds to show me the item on a mock exam that was supposed to help her prepare for the  National Achievement Test (NAT).

I read the question, looked at her and said, "Kahibalo ka ani." (You know this)

The item had a table with two columns, one column listed four body parts and the other listed their corresponding levels of sensitivity to radiation. The question read, "Which is most vulnerable to radiation?" The young girl asked, "Unsa diay nang vulnerable?" (What does vulnerable mean?)

I explained to her the meaning of the word vulnerable. She read the question again, looked at the data in the given table, and triumphantly declared, "Letter C ang answer kay siya man ang pinaka-sensitive!" (The answer is letter C because it's the body part listed as most sensitive!")

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I worked with another Ata girl on drills on vocabulary. After the 10-item quiz I asked her which of the 10 words she encountered that night was the most "alien" to her. She said "obstinate." I encouraged her to think of a situation where she can use the word obstinate so that she will have better retention of the word. She was either too shy to share a situation or just couldn't think of any.

The following day, we were watching the news and there was a community by the river that would not evacuate even after multiple warnings from the National Disaster Coordinating Council that it was flood prone. It has been raining for a couple of days already and the river was starting to overflow. While watching the news, the same girl says, "Obstinate pud kaayo ang mga tao uy!" (The people are very obstinate!")

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This is me honestly asking if the Department of Education realizes how unfair standardized exams are.

1. Up in mountain communities I have been to, public school teachers arrive Monday afternoon, start classes on Tuesday and leave the area on Thursday afternoon or Friday morning. There is just not enough days to cover all the things that the curriculum dictates they cover.
2. The Mother Tongue-Based Multi-Lingual Education is not really implemented in the areas I have been to. Public school teachers just do not speak the indigenous people's language. Some teachers would even tell parents to teach their children to speak in Cebuano (the second language of most of these communities) so that the students will understand the lessons.
3. There is more to life than just getting high marks in standardized exams.

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I understand that the point of basic public education is to develop competencies that will make students functioning members of society. And so I am led to ask these questions:

1. What is our idea of "functioning members" of society? Is this limited to blue-collar jobs? Do we even believe that students who finish in public schools are capable of doing more than just manual labor for the rich and powerful members of our society? Or... do I dare ask this... Do we subconsciously think that children who get a public school education are only good for blue-collar jobs so why should the state invest in them any more than it already has? This TEDx video features a public school teacher who does amazing work with her students and yet she shares about how a former student had to work really hard to get admittance to a private high school.
2. What if the whole point of education was to make us better human beings and not just functioning members of society? This article talks about removing liberal arts from college because you don't need to waste months and months poring over Kant, Freud, and Comte or learning to read and appreciate poetry and other great literary works. You can learn all that from the internet. And although the article has a point about STEM courses needing expensive equipment that is available in college institutions... it is an article written by a person who has missed the meaning of what education is. Education that goes beyond getting a college diploma.

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In a couple of weeks thousands of students will take the NAT. A lot of students will think that they are stupid and/or are only good for "planting kamote" (a derogatory expression used to tell students that they have no future in education so they might as well just plant sweet potatoes) because they don't know what "vulnerable" or "obstinate" mean.

I hope that one day we'll get over standardized exams and intentionally work towards deschooling society.