Daphne Louise Santillan

Xavier University, Cagayan de Oro City

Padayon lang. A famous Visayan phrase that is translated to English as “just to go forward”

My name is Daphne Louise Santillan and I am currently an 11^th Grade student at Xavier University at Ateneo de Cagayan and I am also a Cagayan de Oro National High School Junior High alumna.

It is an honor to be invited to an event with people who are committed to work together for a collective purpose. Allow me to begin by telling you my story. Before, when face-to-face classes were open, I was just like any other student on a school campus. Your typical high school student. My favorite past time was hanging out with my friends and classmates and I was also a studious student who devoted her entire day to academic pursuits throughout the school year. Nonetheless, I also struggled, but having my classmates’ support and encouragement made me feel better because their physical presence helped me: I am not alone. We are not alone.

But almost all of these were taken away by just a single snap of the Marvel villain Thanos because of the COVID 19 virus. Many of us thought that this global issue would be resolved in one or two weeks but it spread like wildfire. Our adversary is hidden and contagious. Therefore, we are all being urged to stay at home by our authorities. Despite my family’s best efforts to stay safe from the enemy, it eventually got the best of us and we were tested positive. I used to be a happy studious student who dedicated her day to scholastic pursuits but, today, I can barely complete one task. Learning at home along with external and internal issues made it difficult for me to set boundaries. That is why I am mostly unmotivated to continue studying.

My story of struggle is just one out of the billions stories other Filipino students have faced. Fortunately, it is an asset to be present in today’s generation because of technology and social media platforms. These things allowed me to witness their own kind of struggle, and some are also struggles I can relate to. Electricity, gadgets, and Internet access are all basic necessities for today’s modern learning approach. However, these are also major problems in a country where many people live in poverty. Some students are organizing a piso project similar to the Piso Para Sa Laptop on various social media platforms in order to generate funds for an online class device.

Students in different fields of studies that require them to be taught physically are likewise concerned about not being able to execute them hands-on. Others are also in financial difficulty as a result of the month-long quarantine lockdown, which has resulted in the loss of work for millions of parents and guardians.

Illiterate parents and guardians are also finding it difficult to teach their kindergarten and grade school children using the module provided. Many people are also struggling with their mental health particularly as a result of bereavement and solitude. Teachers are suffering and I believe that they are doing their best to give high quality education. Our educational system was already beset by issues, nevertheless the academic added additional degree of difficulties. Witnessing their story with faith in the Almighty also fueled my motivation to serve struggling students, like me, also followed. Together with the student government and supportive teachers in my previous school, we were able to implement various student-led programs, just like our kumustahan center which serves as an avenue for students to express their feelings and inspire them to maintain a positive outlook during these trying times without leaving anyone behind. Our workshop with BSP’s Batang Bayani program also instilled in us the belief that the pandemic will not derail us and that we should adapt to the New Normal of schooling while continuing to lead our peers These programs were established because we heard and saw the situation of our peers in school. I was once demotivated but I remember my parents’ sacrifices my life’s dreams and goal and that dream includes helping to improve the situation of our education system a few years from now by speaking to all of you. How are we five or 10 years from today? Have we learned our lesson and corrected them, or did we go blind to the situation? Putting our class on hold until face to face classes resume is not an option. It will just worsen our predicament. However, attempting to make it work is preferable to doing nothing.

Positive COVID 19 cases are still on the rise but a sign of the silver lining that we hope to see is now readily apparent, thanks to vaccines created by our medical professionals. With this, I hope five or 10 years today, we rise to the situation, just like going to face-to-face class setup so that students and teachers would interact more without fear from the virus.

Another is rising to literacy by having more literate students in Mathematics, Science, and Reading. In a period where technology keeps on advancing, I also hope that there would be more students knowledgeable in robotics research. I hope that students will have more access to learning, especially those who live below poverty line so that they will not feel discouraged about having less in their pockets when going to school. According to statistics, there are about two million young Filipinos who are forced to do labor rather than go to school. And I hope to see more children in the classroom than at the work place. I also hope that students in the coming years would be more understanding of others and their mental health. There is still so much to improve but if we all work collectively and acquire the concept of bayanihan among us as Filipinos, then maybe we can become better in our education system day by day, little steps. There is still hope. There is light in every situation.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am Daphne Louise L. Santillan and I stand here, not as one, but as 26 million Filipino students. Learning is a fundamental human right and I believe that leaders can come up with efficient regulations. We’re moving forward but, this time, it’s different. We’re moving forward with the lessons we’ve learned, the tactics we’ve discovered and by, of course, listening to each other. Let us not allow our current situation define who we become tomorrow. Yesterday was about suffering but, today, it is all about recovering. Yesterday was about pain but, today, it’s about feeling. Today marks our new beginning, our healing.

Padayon lang.

FR. BIENVENIDO NEBRES, SJ

FOUNDING CHAIR, SYNERGEIA FOUNDATION

We have to learn from the past. All previous educational reforms in the Philippines were led by foreign international experts. New Math by Peace Corps volunteers in the 1960s. PRODED, SEDP were funded by the World Bank and ADB and they brought in international experts. That’s not a problem in itself. The problem was they all had ready-made solutions even before they had clearly understood the problem.

In my experience, you spend time on the ground, talking to the teachers and understanding the problem. I am a mathematician and I worked in science and the first and foremost step to solve a problem is to spend time understanding and defining the problem. To say students are failing, that is an undefined problem. There are very many reasons and very many different solutions.

 All previous reforms centered on revising the intended curriculum—syllabus, scope and sequence, topics to be covered, etc. And they always come out with a new intended curriculum, all of it. There is a new Math, back to basics, K to 12 revised. I thought they would only revise 11 and 12 but they revised everything. And then, of course, you measure by PISA and the National Achievement Test, and you find out nothing much has changed. Why? Because learning does not happen with the intended curriculum. It does not happen with a piece of paper. It happens in the classroom, in the implemented curriculum. And that has never been my experience at all. And so I have been pushing that we have now to focus on what happens in the classroom.

The situation of Philippine schools is so diverse, from city schools where a big problem is congestion, classes of 70 to 80 in high school, to rural schools where children have to walk three to five kilometers to get to school. You cannot have one solution for all. And it is only when you get down to the ground that you can identify targeted interventions that will make a difference and that will find a solution to the concrete situation. And this depends on the leadership of the principal and community support. That is why this effort must get down to the level of the division, the district, and the LGU, as we have emphasized so much earlier.

One of the things that we have learned from this kind work is in order to attend to problems surrounding education–that is good health, and nutrition–is we have to bring together different government departments. Poverty intervention belongs to DSWD, not to DepEd; health belongs to DOH. The experience of Synergeia Foundation is that it is the LGU working with the Local School Board and the Synergeia family that can bring together these needed interventions for the children.

The work of Synergeia Foundation which has centered on LGUs and Local School Boards has been effective in improving schooling. Gawad Kalinga and the Ateneo Center for Education Development have also been working with LGUs, DepEd, and DSWD on feeding programs. This shows that the appropriate level of intervention to improve education should not be at the national level but at the level of the LGU-School Division-School District. The National Level has to be there like a good CEO. It has to be an enabler. For example, the School Feeding Law is an enabler because it provides the budget. There is now a national budget for feeding. I have been a CEO many times in my life. Your job as CEO is not to do things directly but to create an enabling environment so that leaders closer to the ground can get the work done. The DepEd National should not be getting down to the details. Its job should be to make it possible for divisions and principals to develop a good curriculum.