TRANSCRIPT OF SEN. PIA CAYETANO'S MESSAGE DURING DEPED'S 2020 BRIGADA ESKWELA & OPLAN BALIK ESKWELA NATIONAL KICK-OFF PROGRAM

I'd like to send my warm greetings to Secretary Briones and to my colleague, of course, Senator Win Gatchalian, to my former colleagues in the House of Representatives and to all the whole DepEd family and stakeholders who are listening and watching us today.

Magandang umaga po sa inyong lahat.

I want to keep this very brief, but I'd also like to instill in the minds of every educator out there, and that includes also myself as a parent, that truly, the Bayanihan Spirit is called upon now more than ever to make our education effective for our young children.

I know that the urgent task at hand appears to be the delivery of the education materials. So we are now rushing to determine and to set into place other modes of delivery because the usual physical presence of the teachers and the students in the classroom setting will not be happening anytime soon.

However, I'd like to include in the discussion - and I know, of course, the Secretary and the Usecs. are on this - that beyond the simple delivery of education is our perennial problem on reaching every single child. Because we live in a time where we have all the data analytics, we have all the information that we need, the data. Learning analytics is available to us. We can measure, we can collect, we can analyze the data about every learner in order to optimize the learning for each child. And yet, our country, like many other countries, not just us, [is] still teaching in the mode of a hundred years ago, where there is a blackboard, there is a teacher, and there are students.

And we need to get past that. I want to be able to use this crisis that we are in to jump-start the education of the future. I am so happy that Secretary Briones and I see eye to eye on this, the Usecs. that attend our hearings are on board. But we need to be able to translate this into actual action on the ground with our teachers. We need them to understand. Because even I continue to see that image of a blackboard, a teacher, and students. There's going to be quarterly exams, and there's final exams.

But we have all the data that tells us that the learning curve shows that some are advanced and fast learners, and some are slow learners. And we need to get away from that, the model that we have because it perpetuates the stigma against slower learners, when they may not even be slow learners at all, they just may have other intelligence, multi-intelligence that are not seen on the spectrum immediately.

And that is why I have been a proponent for blended learning and I also want to be sure that in our haste to set into place this new modalities of delivery, we do not simply deliver education in a different format, meaning from blackboard it became a computer. Because that is not blended learning. We really need to make use of every instrument that we have, including the parents... every tool that we have, the parents, the society, retired teachers, all the tools available to us to reach children. And especially those children who live in urban centers. The information and knowledge that they receive outside of the classroom is so abundant that we also need to help them filter this and maximize those learnings outside of the classroom to make it relevant to them in the classroom.

I read a study that said the Math curriculum of the United States is "turn of the century," 1900's. US na nga 'yun, 'no? I don't think we can say that mas advanced tayo sa US. So I also have concerns of that nature. And I trust that in the years to come, or actually, in the weeks and months to come... Because when I... we have hearings, I know and recognize that the DepEd officials know this. It's really a matter of cascading all this information and bringing our teachers up to speed.

So I believe that is the bigger challenge. Not simply the fact that our students will not be able to go to the classroom, but the reality that we need to be able to reach every single child and to be able to deliver education to them at each level that each child needs to hear, needs to understand his education.

So on that note, I do believe that the best time for the Bayanihan spirit to come alive is now. A lot of people know the reality that great things happen in the time of crisis, great ideas come about in the time of crisis. And so I challenge and I support all the initiatives of DepEd to make the most of these challenging times and really revolutionize education for our young people today.

Thank you very much and God bless you all!