Some concerned members of the business community have formed a foundation called Philippine Business for Education. They are campaigning that the president who will be elected in May of 2010 will turn out to be an Education president.

Improving the quality of Philippine education is the greatest challenge to our next set of leaders, starting with the highest executive of the land. I suggest that all candidates for president and other important national positions consider the proposals of an American educational expert by the name of E.D. Hirsch, Jr. who is coming out with a book entitled The Making of Americans and is the author of two best sellers on American education entitled Cultural Literacy and The Knowledge Deficit. It is well known in educational circles that the Philippines and the US turn out some of the worst graduates from their respective elementary and secondary schools. What Mr. Hirsch identifies as the root cause of the poor quality of American education could very well apply to the Philippine situation.

Mr. Hirsch argues that the core problem with American education is that educational theorists, especially in the early grades, have for the past sixty years rejected academic content in favor of "child-centered" and "how-to" learning theories that are at odds with how children really learn. The result is failing schools and widening inequality, as only children from content-rich (usually better-off) home can take advantage of the schools' educational methods.

I find the criticism Hirsch hurls at the education establishment in the US to be very relevant to Philippine realities where the children of the poor generally go to public schools and the children of the well-to-do enroll in private institutions. According to Hirsch, a content-based curriculum is essential to addressing social and economic inequality. A nationwide, specific, grade-by-grade curriculum established in the early school grades can help fulfill the objective of giving all children, regardless of language, religion, or origins the opportunity to participate as equals and become competent citizens.

Hirsch focuses on the early grades, because acquiring a core of commonality and civic commitment is most urgently needed in those years to enable diversity and individuality, as well as equal opportunity, to prevail thereafter. The early grades are critical for assuring later competence. A good general education in the early grades is the necessary foundation for citizenship, literacy, effective use of computers, and, in the new economic era, for speedy and successful job retraining. Hirsch strongly criticizes the widespread notion that the early grades are places where students should learn merely basic skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic rather than specific content. He contends that the US has paid a high price for a persistent adherence to this fallacious, how-to conception of early schooling in which "critical thinking" is supposed to transcend "mere facts."

The focus on the elementary school is especially urgent in the Philippines because some forty percent of pupils in our public schools drop out by the time they reach Grade 6, primarily for economic
reasons. If we want enlightened Filipino citizens, the elementary school is the proper place in which to prepare our youth for democratic living. As in the US, our ambition as a nation is to give children from any and all origins a chance to participate in the public forum as equals, according to their "talents and virtues," as Thomas Jefferson put it, no matter who their parents are or what language or religion they practice in their homes. As Horace Mann, the great 19th-century propagandist for public education, foresaw, competence brings community. To equalize opportunity through schooling is to create competent and loyal citizens.

The book The Making of Americans is being published by Yale University Press and will come out in September 2009. Interested parties may get in touch with brenda.king@yale.edu. The book is a must reading for all who are looking for ways to improve the quality of education at the elementary school level in Philippine public schools. For comments, my e-mail address is bvillegas@uap.edu.ph.