“This has been an exhausting year for everyone.”
“This has been an exhausting year for everyone.”
When news broke that the Department of Education was contemplating only a two-week summer break in between school years, I thought, that’s a bad idea that’s gonna reap brickbats.
And it did. Many netizens – teachers, parents, students – objected to this idea so strongly that DepEd backtracked and said they were rethinking what will go down in history as an extremely ill-considered idea.
Online education has taken a huge toll on everyone involved. Because it is new and many are dealing with it on a trial-and-error basis, teachers and other academic personnel are struggling to determine how to assess whether students have adequately learned a topic, given that instruction is not face-to-face and that students are based at home where teachers cannot monitor their actions.
This uncertainty and lack of empirical data has resulted in teachers imposing heavier loads and requirements on students. Our youngest daughter is in Grade 10, and almost daily deals with anxiety because of the near-impossible tasks set by her teachers – the creation of videos, detailed Powerpoints, and so on.
I grew up before the digital age and managed to graduate from high school at 16 without having to do all that — just pass exams and the occasional theme papers. But current circumstances have made it difficult for students and faculty to cope. To take away the usual two-month break between school years would be unduly punishing an already crushed and fatigued sector of society.
Last month, DepEd Secretary Leonor Briones said “We are very careful in calibrating itong bakasyon [this vacation]. Kasi nakabakasyon na sila ng anim na buwan, magdagdag na naman tayo ng bakasyon [because they have had a six-month vacation already, and now we’re going add more vacation time again].”
As the kids would say: Kim, there’s people that are dying… (it’s a meme, look it up.)
Secretary Briones, please consider that what you should look at here is not that there will be another vacation after the lengthy lockdown, but the timing of the break. What students and teachers and academic personnel are looking forward to this summer is a respite from months of highly stressful endeavor in new and uncharted territory. It’s not a matter of what, but when. And a break is badly needed right now.
Consider also that many students, and some teachers, were and are operating at a disadvantage because of the lack of equipment. Technology is the keyword in online learning, and one of the reasons the opening of the 2020-2021 school year was pushed back from June to October was because not everyone involved had computers at home.
We have seen many social media posts and news items showing students, some of them working, making do with a cellphone to tune into their teachers’ Zoom lectures.
Not only teachers and students are challenged by online learning. Parents are, too. The module system has made it necessary for parents or other people in the household to help children complete their requirements and tasks. This is something not everyone in such a situation is equipped or qualified to do.
It is highly likely that we will continue distance learning into the next school year, one, because the President has said he is not in favor of reopening schools yet; second, because new COVID-19 variants that are more contagious have reached the Philippines; and third, because the government is only now beginning its inoculation program and it will take months before the vaccines reach the greater number of people.
In the interest of safety and caution, and to avoid negating precautions already taken, online learning is something we have to accept as the “new normal. We must adapt to it to our best advantage.
Having the usual two-month break would enable teachers to have time to attend digital pedagogy tutorials and seminars. It would allow children to have time to be children. It would let parents and other family members stand down from challenges they are not equipped to face.
Such a vacation would also give time for DepEd officials to reconsider what they know about the reality of teaching and learning “on the ground.” Seems that in their ivory towers, they believe teachers and students are automatons that know no fatigue, “de susi” robots that they can wind up to meet their self-imposed timelines and outcomes.
The truth is, this has been a tiring school year for everyone, and these summer months should be set aside for much-needed rest.
*** Paraphrased from @airasarmiento14: If you were a vampire, living for 500 years, earning P75,000 per day since March 16, 1521 (when Magellan arrived in the Philippines), you would have accumulated P13.6 billion. Mas maliit pa din yon sa P15 BILLION na nawala sa PhilHealth. // FB and Twitter: @DrJennyO
