Why I Still Support the K+12 Education System

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I was thinking about how people are still looking to abolish the K+12 system because it's just an additional expense. Funny enough, some people who are demanding for the abolition of K+12 are also against economic liberalization. Some people still delude themselves with David Guerrero's tagline "It's more fun in the Philippines" which is taken from "It's more fun in Switzerland". It would be more fun in the Philippines if we were serious about improvement. Otherwise, a tagline is just a tagline. K+12 education looks like it's just adding the number of years. However, the way things look is that it isn't. Besides, the education system in the Philippines is long outdated (read my article on that here). I would like to think about how K+12 would be more beneficial. Most people just never saw its benefits. I still wish that K+12 was implemented back then.

K+12 was implemented during the reign of the late former Philippine President Benigno Simeon "Noynoy" C. Aquino III. I may not be a supporter of the late former Philippine President. However, I felt K+12 was something he did right. The implementation made me think about what was wrong with the old curriculum. I would like to share my stress in high school (and why I hated it). I remembered how the four year of high school are stressful. I always felt I was a moron in high school because of my bad grades. I frequently took my frustration out on others believing I was never good enough. I would develop some questioning and all I got was, "Well just study it. The DECS (now DepEd) requires it!" Yet, we fail to see that studying mathematics and sciences are important not just to get a job or a profession--it's to understand the world around us better. I used to hate trigonometry during my fourth year in high school. Now, I see trigonometry has built a lot of stuff. The distance formula helps me understand how land surveyors do their job in part. That's why I changed my original desire (as an angry teenager) to abolish trigonometry from the high school curriculum.

I would think of what I hated about K+10 in high school. I feel everything is rushed. One good example is how can anybody expect to learn economic literacy in the fourth year (read here)? We had a teacher pretty much like the late Miriam P. Defensor-Santiago. She was highly intelligent but can she impart her knowledge on a very last-minute subject? Sure, it was one whole year but I had to really get economics subjects in college before I learned their practical application. It wouldn't be like if I graduated Grade 6, went to three years of Middle School, and finally three years of High School. If we had all the maths, sciences, economics, and every related subject taught (and please do teach mathematics more practically, read here) in both middle school and high school--I think better proficiency can be developed. For example, I feel that my hatred for math in high school was more pressure on my short attention span since I don't have dyscalculia. Right now, I end up seldomly doing basic trigonometric and calculus problems to try and keep my brain sharp.

Meanwhile, K+12 would mean the following things which would change how education is done:

  1. Sometimes, we need more time to accomplish a task. I was thinking about how learning mathematics at my own pace has been better than the pressure of high school mathematics. Learning about chemistry and physics at my own pace now (which I do for fun even if I was weak in those back in high school). I think K+12 can easily spread this out to at least slowly build confidence in mathematics and sciences. I think having economics for both middle school and high school will build better economic literacy. I felt so stupid that even after taking high school economics, college economics, and graduate school economics--I still felt that I haven't grasped that literacy without having to self-learn.
  2. Graduating high school at the age of 18 means people can easily find a job while studying college. I always felt that some people couldn't get a job until second year college. Let's think about people who work to pay their high school fees. However, they can't get a higher paying job because they are below 18 years old. One could think that being able to graduate and get a job means two things. A person could either decide not to pursue a college degree or to pursue one. Some jobs today may not even require college degrees thanks to K+12.
  3. It would mean knowing the right course fo you. I'd confess so many people (including myself) wanted to take B.S. Information Technology (BSIT). Sadly, my mathematics GPA in high school was one point lower. Many wanted to take BSIT at the University of San Carlos-Talamban Campus (USC-TC). I was among that crowd and ended up not getting admitted. The next thing that happened was so many people exited BSIT for other courses such as B.S. Business Administration (BSBA) and for math lovers who hate programming--they probably decided to pursue B.S. Mathematics and B.S. Management Accounting. I really should've stopped insisting on taking BSIT just to avoid being labeled as stupid. So what if I'm labeled as stupid? Some people may have had graduated from highly difficult courses but are stupid with real life matters. It reminded me I knew someone who may have graduated from a difficult course but her messy history with men is something to think about.
  4. The three tracks (Academic, Technical-Vocational-Livelihood, and, Sports and Arts) may even determine the best courses in life. Vocational education might be more helpful than a college degree for some. I could imagine if a college graduate who laughed at carpenters in high places one day had to get a carpenter to fix his roof. There's nothing shameful about being a carpenter. Otherwise, without carpenters, I'd probably drop down dead trying to fix my own roof. 
If the Philippines truly want to become another Singapore--adopt the K+12 education system. While at it, learn from Singapore. Having something similar to Singapore's education system in the Philippines can be only possible through K+12. 

References

Websites

"K1-12 Basic Education Curriculum"
https://k12philippines.com

"Why is Singapore’s school system so successful, and is it a model for the West?" by Jo Adetunji
Editor, The Conversation UK, (February 11, 2014 2.49pm GMT)

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