In the past months, as a part of CHED Technical Panel for Psychology, we were privy to the evolving K-12 curriculum. The first time it was presented, we noted its complexity, rigidity and the unrealistic expectation that students know their career direction by Grade 10. We also pointed out the lack of support to help students make their career decisions. Only 25% of public schools actually have licensed guidance counselors. And then there is the sheer volume of students - one counselor handles as much as 8000 students. We were disappointed that General Psychology that could help students understand themselves was removed as a required course. The guidance faculty recommended the inclusion of a course on Personal Effectiveness that we supported. We were informed later on that the proposed course was not accepted.
We could have taken this in stride and said “Oh well, we tried.” But maybe it’s because we are the EDSA generation that we refused to just give up. We came up with a position paper jointly signed by the Psychology Association of the Philippines (PAP) and our CHED technical panel. The paper pointed out the challenges of Philippine education in terms of bullying and attrition, the goals of K-12 in providing life skills to students and the need for a non-academic curriculum and support structures. With the help of psychology faculty of UP, we designed and proposed a course that would help students know themselves and make more informed decisions on their careers. We talked to and sent the paper to heads and colleagues in DepEd and CHED. Last week, our proposed course was approved as a core subject for Grade 11.
So let’s commemorate EDSA buoyed with the knowledge that people power is still alive. But rather than going against the government, the call is to work with them - because building the nation is not just the responsibility of our leaders.
And we will continue to do this. The PAP has been working with the Department of Education on their child protection programs. From the initial training workshops we conducted , we realized that we need to go deeper. Training isn’t enough. What public schools really need are more hands and capability. We conceptualized a program called Psychologists for Philippine Education where a Psychology department adopts a public school. The psychology faculty can train public school teachers in greater number and through service learning, Psychology students can volunteer as teacher aides, student mentors, and assist in the guidance office. Our CHED Technical Panel will be working with schools that have been named Centers of Excellence/Development in Psychology in designing modules and instructional materials for the Psychology courses in the K-12 program. We will encourage our researchers to continue building knowledge on how we can best teach and learn.
We are working as a community to be part of the solution. This is our version of people power.