this is bad news. i share your concern.

Benign0: I can only address that fundamental question through my own experience as an educator — we are society that aspires to.

cocoy: Excellent second point. Thinking is something we have to re-teach our kids.

1) “However, more and more have increasingly confided that the tuition is simply getting too expensive. And this from a student who gave me a Lacoste shirt for Christmas.”

heh. well life is fast becoming too expensive. Free Market allows these institutions to keep themselves exclusive. pay the fee to join the club or get out. just look at Apple, pay the price or leave the cult. My guess is that people would rather work harder, make more money and still “enjoy” the benefits of private school. But the downside of that is if private schools choose to keep w/”quality (of pay),” they have to keep up with quality of education.

2) “Are we helping our students achieve?”

no. i don’t think we are. to me, education is the fuel that drives intelligence and thus creativity (which to me, creativity is the ability to be able to take various discrete disciplines and come up with something new or unique). In this day and age most Filipinos haven’t touched or felt that facts and figures is just a Google or wiki away but the ability to discern whether or not that “fact” is indeed true or how true depending on the weights of other sources is another matter entire. And that’s where education comes in and I think that’s we’re failing at.

Maybe the more fundamental question is:

Are we a society with an ethic of achievement?

Yeah, the weeks leading to the first day of school are the busiest. Sad thing is, they only get busier from here.

The basis of the curriculum is a thorny historical and political issue. In our colonial history, it was mostly a tool for subjugation. During the American times, for assimilation. An American-style curriculum is pretty much what we’ve been handed after WW2, and there have been many attempts to nationalize it since then. (Hence, the politics.)

I’d like to believe that curriculum design has become more scientific. But what I see is a mistaken emphasis placed on standards which not all public schools are capable of meeting but are nonetheless there so that policymakers can say that we’re going somewhere. What they often forget is that a curriculum must be matched by an institution capable of delivering it.

Anyway, I got more to say so I’ll just get back to you on this. I don’t have much time now. First day bukas. :)