Why Juan Can’t Think

WRITTEN BY ROMMEL LALATA

1989-90 VOL 2 NO 4

EDITOR’S NOTE: Rommel Lalata’s piece voices the resounding frustration of the state of our science education. In addition to having inefficient pedagogy, fordisplay laboratories and equipment, and inadequately trained teachers that are all inflamed by K-12, we also have a low number of science graduates and enrollees. Crunching the latest ten-year data from the Commission on Higher Education, the average number of science enrollees is about 45,000 whereas the average number of science graduates is about 7,000! And of those 7,000, just how many will go into research in the country? Lalata correctly affirmed that if we were to fix this, we must talk politics and that means addressing the intertwined root problems the country faces which might at first seem to be separated from the struggle of the science and technology sector.

A UNESCO SURVEY of elementary teachers in Asia concerning certain mathematical concepts, revealed that less than 20% of Filipino teachers could grasp the concept of square roots. Ask the common individual on the street about simple arithmetic, say two minus four, for example, You’d be surprised to find out how many people have no concept of negative numbers.

Students are no different. The Department of Education and Sports (DECS) even admits that student performance is lowest in mathematics and in the sciences. Lamentable. For a nation whose target is to become a newly industrialized country (NIC) by the year 2000, these indicators reveal a seriously disturbing situation.

In the 1960’s, the UP College of Engineering boasted of being numero uno in Southeast Asia. The situation was so favorable that it seems the college chose to stay in that bygone era. Such jokes, unfortunately, cut uncomfortably close to the truth. But we speak of no deterioration in science education here, after all, we never really had quality education in science. We are left behind for a very simple reason: we could not catch up.

How could we? Teachers are ill-trained. We have very poor curricula. There are inefficient systems of teaching and administration. Government misprioritizes even as it pays excellent lip service to science. Congress has no science legislative agenda. In other words, there is no life in science.

Our science education confirms this. Instead of stimulating the intellect, tickling the imagination of the average individual but nevertheless potential scientist, our version of science education is pitifully encourages memorization and rote learning. It stifles the spirit of inquiry and is against the noble tradition of what science should be. If the preceding weren’t true, how come our number of Ph.D.’s in the pure sciences remain below a hundred? We could not even guarantee that they are above 50.

So how come we find ourselves in a pea soup not of our own making? Here follows a scientifically sound (but short) delving into the issue:

Having no other model with which to pattern our system of education, we chose that of the West or to be explicit, that of the United States. The economic framework laid down for us as a neocolony made our policy-makers adopt a system which will suit the business need of foreign interests. So we have biologists who never become researchers but doctors, engineers who become managers and never practice, chemists who leave for abroad, and virtually no physicists. We are definitely delving into politics here, after all, science policies are determined by political decisions.

So we find ourselves in a stagnant and stunted science situation. We have virtually no industrial base to support a failing economy. No advances to put us in the limelight of scientific history. We cannot even answer the needs of our own people. There is definitely some cause for worry.

If we are to speak of a future, we should speak of science. We should speak of education. And if so it is inevitable that we will speak of politics. ●