Cyber-Ed dreams
Aside from it being the most exciting that will happen to the Philippine educational system since the Thomasites, it is, without a doubt, the best response to the challenges we face in the basic education sector today,” Education Secretary Jesli Lapus said in a DepEd statement about the Cyber-Ed Project (CEP).The statement continues: “The Cyber-Ed Project uses satellite technology to provide an efficient and cost-effective solution to the need to deliver educational services to public elementary and secondary schools throughout the country. It links these schools to a nationwide network that provides 12 video channels, wireless wide area networking, local area networking and wireless Internet connectivity.
“A total of 37,794 schools, or 90 percent of all public schools nationwide, would be connected in the next three years. These schools would receive live broadcasts featuring lectures and presentations from master teachers as well as coursewares on demand and other valuable resource materials.”
Lapus also said: “The real challenge in basic education lies in narrowing the disparity between those who perform well and those who do not. Those in the far-flung areas will benefit from this technology since they will be given access to our best teachers and our best resource materials.”
The CEP, the department says, is based on China’s E-Education Project which covers some 500,000 schools and universities.
The project will cost P26.48 billion. Funding will come from a loan from China for 86 percent of the cost, so that the Philippines will shoulder only 14 percent or P3.71 billion. We will have to pay for the loan over the next decades.
Lapus explained that satellite-based distance learning technology is widely used worldwide—in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Chile, El Salvador, Panama, Guatemala, Honduras, Thailand, India, Indonesia and China.
In the countries where satellite-supported MDE (Modern Distance Education) technology is successfully used, students in spacious classrooms watch and listen to teachers—the best in their fields—on TV or on their computers. One computer per student is the norm for lessons are done in real time. The teacher giving the lesson is often doing so live. The lessons are even interactive. This means each student uses his or her computer to answer or ask questions.
Most of those enrolled in MDE schools are teenagers and older high school and college students—as well as adults taking continuing-education courses. Their classrooms have all the space for the TV sets, computers and other equipment. The schoolbuildings are equipped with satellite discs and are wired to receive and send all sorts of multimedia transmissions.
If Secretary Lapus’ vision comes true, we would be envied even by China and the USA. For we would become the world’s greatest achiever in primary and elementary pedagogy and in the use of information communications technology (ICT) for six to 12-year-old children.
Ground-zero realities
Many experts oppose the Cyber-Ed Project for technical and financial reasons. We will only focus now on whether the department’s CEP indeed addresses and solves the most urgent problems of Philippine public-school basic education.
The most urgent problems now of our public school system as purveyor of basic education all arise from fundamental lacks.
(a) The lack of school buildings and classrooms. This school year, 41,000 classrooms are needed despite the large size of classes and the 3-shift use of schoolhouses. Some pupils sit on the floor and write on their laps. Some classes are held on staircases, the teachers look up to their pupils from the landings below. Where will the TV sets and computers—ideally one for each child—be placed? The average number of pupils in a basic education classroom is 43.9. If five eight-year-old classmates share one computer will they learn anything?
(b) The lack of electrical power in areas where pupils severely need the most help—in slums and in mountain and island communities of the archipelago. These are where you find the schoolchildren most left behind by those in the richer areas. How can the TV sets and computers receive satellite-fed lessons if there is no electric power?
(c) Lack of good and competent teachers—because many have become OFWs—in English, Math and Science. Does CEP address this lack adequately?
(d) Lack of thorough and methodical training and assessment of teachers. Indeed, the Cyber-Ed Project would be able to provide first-class TV and multimedia training and competency upgrading of teachers. What about teachers in far-flung areas mentioned in (b) above?
(e) Lack of good, error-free teaching materials, textbooks, teaching manuals, etc. that every child and teacher should have. Will Cyber-Ed use the electronic versions of the same error-riddled textbooks and guides?
There has also been a lack of analysis of the project as a means of “narrowing the disparity between those who perform well and those who do not” among the littlest children in the public primary and elementary schools. Those who are most behind now, will even become greater victims of the “knowledge and information gap.” For the best performers in the urban areas will end up being the most benefited by the CEP while the worst performers in the slums and the mountaintops will become the most disadvantaged.
Also not given weight is that MDE/Cyber-Ed—in the USA and China—has been found to be inappropriate for kids in primary and elementary schools.
