F.A.I.L

“F.A.I.L.”

You have failed! The scariest sentence for a kid to receive. Why is that? It is because it has been passed in our minds that failing is a shortcoming. “If you fail, that means you are weak”, a prejudice that a lot of Filipino children have been taught since they were young. That explains why Filipinos are very competitive. “We will have to be at the top to be enough to get recognized, if you are not, then you probably have a problem in your life.” These are words full of toxicity that can be removed with the help of quality education. Some may ask, is education really that important? Of course, it is. I reckon it is the building blocks of our life. It defines everything that we know, whether it may be truths or lies. We know the description, context, definition, and such of a thing through education. Without proper education, we would be clueless about everything.

In my perspective, quality education is not just about teachers imparting lessons to students. It is about the process of learning for the students. To achieve quality education process is rather simple, the teacher speaks, and the students listen. If the students ask, then the teacher answers. It should always be a two-way process. This would foster a supportive environment that is effective and where both teachers and students understand each other.  

There are a lot of challenges people face when it comes to quality education. I can divide it into two perspectives. A perspective for the student and for the teacher.

In my experience as a student, the biggest challenge that I face in fostering quality education is my fear of failure. I mean, how are we going to learn if we always keep in mind the lows of failure? Focusing on the lows of failures will keep you down and will not help you up. Only you yourself can help your way up. What students should do instead is to find the positive in the midst of the negatives. Take the word fail as an example. A word full of negativity. However, we can transform this to “First Attempt In Learning” or “Finding Answers In Light”. Through these students would become better learners and not focus on the depth of failure, but look up in the clouds of opportunities.

Now for teachers, it has been a very controversial topic that our country, the Philippines gives teachers very low salaries. This encourages the teachers to go abroad and teach other people instead. This is a very big concern because instead of Filipinos getting the benefit of good teachers, the good teachers are going abroad for the benefit of good salaries. This would cause a brain drain that has a detrimental impact on the quality of education in the Philippines, as it deprives schools of talented and experienced educators.

In the past, the Philippines was considered one of the few “smarter” countries in Southeast Asia. This made our economy rise up very quickly. However, when our country regained its independence, the economy went down. This is real proof of how education can affect the economy. It was up during the American Period because American education was of high quality. The decline started when we had control of the educational system of our country. This means that the quality of education in the Philippines is low. Only a few of the schools in our country is quality and most of those schools are private schools, schools that are not accessible to everyone.

Technology is very helpful nowadays as it is being used for propaganda to improve the quality of education in the Philippines. This is where people communicate their insights just like how the government should focus more on providing children with quality education. As they always say, “Kabataan ang pagasa ng bayan”. But how will this be achieved and become true if we cannot even provide them with the education that they deserve? They should invest more in the children’s education as it is a very essential part of every child’s life. The problem remains because the government has other priorities. People have tried their best to communicate properly but it seems like the message is just not arriving to the receiver. Would this mean that the communication of the people with the government is a fail?